Skip to content

Muntjac Magazine

4th world Anarchists for a magazine as a community resource by us, for us.

  • Recent Posts
  • Articles
  • Magazine
  • Submissions
  • Zines
  • FAQ
  • Stockists
  • Fellow Travelers
  • Anarchism In Sudan Archive
  • Merch
  • PGP
  • About Muntjac
  • In The Wild
  • Current Issue

Month: December 2024

Harrow Antifascists – Report back from Harrow 07.08.24

Posted on 14/12/2024 by muntjac

This article was features in Muntjac Magazine Issue 1

Around 400 anti racists came out last night in North Harrow while the fascist rioters failed to show up at their announced location. If they had shown up they wouldn’t have stood a chance.

Around 100 people joined a protest with speeches and chants called by the local TUC, PSC & Counterfire. On the other side of the junction around 300 people lined every shop in the high street as part of a community defence group put together at 2 days notice. All of the local man dem came out and stood alongside the shopkeepers. There was a very strong turnout from the local Tamil community as well as brothers from Mahfil Ali Mosque and many Hindus and Sikhs coming out in unity and the community defence stayed out long after the protest finished. Many of us planned to travel to Brentford or Hounslow if fash didn’t turn up, but they failed to show up there as well! There was a huge sense of joy among everyone there that our community had come out in such numbers and represented, and that the racist riots we’ve seen across the country weren’t happening on our patch.

The protest was mostly white and the Community defence was mostly Black and Asian but the whole community was united. Only a handful of people linked to the activist scene travelled from other parts of london to support and their support was very much appreciated. This is because most people from the scene were in areas closer to them like Finchley, Walthamstow, Stokey and Croydon, and people up for travelling north west mostly decided to go to Brentford instead where numbers were more needed. Elsewhere in Harrow over 100 brothers stood guard around Harrow Central Mosque late into the night and the fascists came nowhere near.

Unable to have a mob riot the local fash have resorted to tactics they’re describing as “guerrilla warfare”. Reports have been coming in the past few days of a liquid being thown on a hijabi women by a white man which may have been acid, cars of white people driving round shouting racist abuse and death threats at POC, bottles thrown over the fence of a school holding a summer camp and a white van driving around Wembley with a man throwing acid at Muslim women, white men in balaclavas being arrested by police in Harrow on their way to riot and an Indian student fatally stabbed in a possible racist attack. The school has been contacted and confirmed there was an incident, other reports such as fighting in Wealdstone are unconfirmed and can fly around at these times but we know what is taking place.

Aside from a handful of potential spotters and livestreamers too frightened to film, a Hindutva fascist and confused desi Tommy Robinson supporter called Tirbhuwan Chauhan showed up, and a lone polish fascist started shouting racist abuse in the middle of the crowed and stamped on the foot of a man with his leg in a cast before the fascist was rescued by police. But instead of arresting him the police guarded him in numbers before bundling him away into a getaway car. Another car drove past and a racist punched a protester out the car window before speeding off but the police did nothing about this. Instead the police decided to focus on trying to enforce the section 60 they’d put in place and harass anti racists into removing their face coverings. The police couldn’t get their heads around the fact that the section of society they’re so used to criminalising and stereotyping were the ones who were out to protect our community and prevent a riot. However people looked out for each other and refused to remove our face coverings and despite threats, the police failed to arrest any anti-racists or enforce the section 60.

Violent riots nationwide, co ordinated racist attacks by lone individuals and small groups  and arson attacks on homes aimed at massacring or expelling ethnic and religious minority groups is the definition of a pogrom. The anger of the racists has been stirred up by the lies of the media, influencers and politicians from New Labour, the tories and the far right, looking to scapegoat and distract from the oppression of the entire working class by our ruling elite. If Keir Starmer now goes ahead with his planned sweep of mass immigration raids then he will be rewarding the racist rioters, showing them their actions lead to results, and ordering the mechanisms of the state to take part in the pogrom and expulsion of the most oppressed and targeted section of our society. For now our mass community resistance nationwide may have halted the riots but we may need to utilise our networks and come out with the same strength to stop the colonial racist state from launching deportations and carrying on the pogrom of the racist rioters.

This was written by a member of Harrow Antifascists, a community based anti fascist network which helped organise the local defence group who came out on in anticipation for attacks by fascists. This was first published on the Inquilab blog.

Simoun Magsalin – Notes towards a Decolonial Anarchism for those Neither Indigenous nor Settler

Posted on 14/12/2024 - 14/12/2024 by muntjac

This essay was featured in issue 1 of Muntjac Magazine

In the archipelago so-called as the “Philippines,” the anarchism of the older milieu characterize their anarchism in terms of indigeneity and decoloniality. This milieu, represented by their foremost theorist Bas Umali, appropriate indigeneity and combine it with primitivism and deep ecology. As Umali says,

> Decolonial processes do not tell you to adopt indigenous culture, but they do not stop you from doing so either. The most essential in this process is awareness. If someone takes action it should be their decision. (*Pangayaw and Decolonizing Resistance*, 2020)

As such, this milieu believes that they are entitled to Indigenous culture by virtue of having descended from indigenous ancestors. This is not without controversy. A comrade of mine criticizes this line of thinking saying that this appropriation of indigeneity is unjust, especially given that Umali’s book profited off Indigenous culture without bringing it back to Indigenous communities. In this I agree, but what was more thought-provoking was how they initially characterized Bas Umali as a settler.

Now wait a minute, Bas Umali, like myself and many others, are Manileño, that is, we live in Metro Manila. The Philippines *does* have settler colonies in many places in Mindanao and the Cordilleras, but Manila *itself* has no Indigenous people on its land. Or perhaps to say it in another way, the indigenous peoples of what would become Manila were systematically colonized and have become alienated from their relationship to the land. Indigeneity is first and foremost a social relationship to land and colonization. Indigenous peoples continue to exist in the Philippines, and they exist in relation to colonization by Filipinos. But what are most Filipinos if we’re neither Indigenous nor settler? Clumsy importation of American terminology cannot do for our purposes.

Let’s start with the low-hanging fruit: Who in the Philippines are Indigenous and who are settlers? Perhaps more than fourteen million Indigenous peoples live in the Philippines subdivided into more than a hundred languages. Many of these Indigenous peoples live on their ancestral domains, have a connection to their land, and are actively still threatened by continuing colonization that threatens their lives, cultures, and lands. Many of these Indigenous peoples live alongside Filipino (Christian) settlers from elsewhere in the country. These settlers may perhaps be Ilocanos and Tagalogs gentrifying Baguio and its environs, or perhaps Ilonggo or Visayan settlers in Mindanao. These settlers are unambiguously settler-colonial, their settlement as a project of state-building to settle “Christian” Filipinos across unruly and untamed frontiers by the Spanish, American, and later post-colonial state apparatuses. Settler colonialism also played a part in defeating the first communist insurgency: rebels were offered free land to settle in Mindanao where they became the shock troops for genocide and state-building, especially against Moro (Muslim) and Lumad (neither Christian nor Muslim) peoples and tribes.

With those who have clear positions social relations of Indigeneity and settler colonialism, identifying settlers and Indigenous communities are somewhat clear. But what about me and many other Filipinos whose ancestors *were* indigenous but have become Christianized and colonized?

I posit that most of us so-called Filipinos are post-colonized subjects, specifically *post-colonized creoles*. We bear the trauma of colonization in our collective memory and even in our mixed blood. We are not wholesale colonizers like White people, but we are not Indigenous either. Although this does not mean that post-colonized creoles do not have the capacity to *become* settlers—we absolutely can when we enter in a colonizing social relation with Indigenous peoples such as being settlers in Indigenous land like with Christian settlers in Mindanao or in the Cordilleras. But the point is that we are also not colonized to the same extent as Indigenous communities. In places such as Metro Manila where there are no Indigenous communities, however, we cannot characterize ourselves as settlers without being in relation to Indigenous communities.

As post-colonized creoles, we cannot posit Indigenous anarchisms. By extension, Bas Umali cannot posit an Indigenous anarchism by virtue of a colonized ancestry. While his concept of *pangayaw* is rooted in Indigeneity, my comrade noted Bas Umali is still divorced from an Indigenous context and takes *pangayaw* from Indigenous cultures without giving back to Indigenous communities. (This, however, does not invalidate the value that Indigenous anarchists such as those in the Indigenous Anarchist Federation (IAF-FAI) find in Umali’s work.)

So then, what does it mean to be a post-colonized subject? What does it mean to be creole? What does anarchy look like in a post-colonial/creole context? What are the prospects of decolonization for the post-colonized creole? More than just a critique of Bas Umali’s appropriated indigeneity, these questions have serious implications for anarchism in the post-colonized and underdeveloped world, particularly for the so-called Philippines and Southeast Asia.

When in contact with Indigenous communities, creoles become settler colonists. In this sense, the ideas of decolonization as land-back is quite applicable. Decolonization in this regard is the creole respect of Indigenous lands, the cessation of colonial logic on Indigenous peoples and their lands, and recognizing Indigenous stewardship.

But outside these settler-colonial zones, what is creole decolonization? Historically speaking, creole decolonization was the transfer of sovereignty from a colonial overlord to a creole state. In the Philippines, this creole decolonization manifested when the United States of America formally gave the Philippines its autonomy and later independence. As anarchists and abolitionists, however, we recognize that the new creole state continued to reproduce many colonial institutions and features: the centralized state apparatus, the police, the prisons, the settler-colonies, the plantation logic.

Before colonization the state and its appendages simply did not exist. Creole decolonization was merely the replacement of a colonizer head with a creole head, all institutions of colonization still in place.

The project of decolonization is woefully incomplete as long as the state apparatus, creole settler-colonialism, and other colonizing patterns continues to exist. The archipelago so-called as the Philippines is not “decolonized” by virtue of having Filipinos in charge of the state— especially if we see colonization as an explicit process of state-building. In this sense, decolonization for the creoles of Metro Manila is the *undoing* of the state, *undoing* of wage-labor, the *undoing* of the police and prisons. Colonization imposed these things upon us, so decolonization means the doing away of these things. This does not mean that decolonization is the return to an Eden before colonization, which is impossible. We can never go back. Rather, decolonization is the recognition that the structures instituted by colonization are not permanent or inevitable features of society and thus struggle for a way out.

The national democrats and other leftists in the country still misunderstand what decolonization is—the undoing of what colonization did to us. They still want “national democracy,” therefore a state, police, prisons, wage-labor, all things instituted by colonization. They argue for “national liberation” of a Maoist type where the imperialists and their compradors are kicked out and a national-democratic state oversees national industrialization, with nationalized industry, wage-labor, police, prisons… Decolonization is not this or that group in charge of the state and capital.

But neither is decolonization for post-colonial creoles the appropriation of Indigeneity. Of course we need to reinstate our relationship and connection to the land and bring land-back for those who are Indigenous. Nor is decolonization *merely* our current society but without the state, wage-labor, police, prisons, et cetera, but keeping in place the anti-ecological political-economic extractivist apparatus and ways of living.

Nor is decolonization a vulgar romantic primitivism or localism. As creoles, our blood not only contains the marking of trauma, but also of cosmopolitanism. We have roots from China, America, Ilocos, Cagayan, Cebu, Zamboanga, and Manila. Decolonization in the context of this cosmopolitanism would also mean the reaffirmation of *interconnection*, especially as a hybridity liberated from the insular enclosure of borders and the nation-state system.

It is here that we can then sketch what a decolonial anarchism is for post-colonial creoles: not just the land-bank for Indigenous communities, but also liberation from the structures and institutions that colonialism has put in place and all that entails. Specifically for the Philippines and Southeast Asia, decolonial anarchism means restoring the cosmopolitanism of the sea-routes and opening the national enclosures.

Importantly, we do decolonial anarchy *as creoles* and *as post-colonized subjects*, not appropriative of Indigeneity. Our creolized cultures may have the traumatic scars of colonialism and Christianization, but it is not something *merely* the product of colonial state-building. It is also reflective of a cosmopolitan past as the gateway to China and the Americas and a resiliency of spirit that persists despite the weight of Empire upon it.

Anarchism and anarchy may have its roots in the European and Atlantic proletarian milieu, but it has walked around the world even before Lenin did. Creoles like José Rizal, Isabelo de los Reyes and Lope Santos engaged with and took bits and pieces from anarchism to inform their militancy against colonial authorities. Like how creolized colonial populations would indigenize Christianity, anarchism was similarly indigenized and creolized. Rizal would take point from the Proudhonist tradition, de los Reyes and Santos would take point from Malatesta (and Marx). Decolonial anarchism in the Philippines would mean continuing the indigenization and creolization of anarchism.

Furthermore, creolized colonial populations would practice marronage to leave the colony to create rebel peripheries free from the state. One such act of rebel marronage with the Dagohoy rebellion founded creole communities in the boondocks of Bohol that lived free from the Spanish colonial state for 75 years. Even the Maoists continue this tradition of marronage with their own rebel peripheries, though they are not without problems as they want “national democracy” with their own state.

However, sketching this decolonial anarchy on our own creole post-coloniality is not the same thing as Maoism’s and national democracy’s nationalism and desire for a national state. While we cannot, of course, dismiss nationalism out of hand, given nationalist decolonial struggles for common and communal dignity, we cannot also dismiss how leftists use it to justify right-opportunism with the ranks of the ruling class on the basis of nationalism against imperialism. This is how national democracy acted as the left wing of the Rodrigo Duterte’s fascism. Decolonial anarchism can and should be specific to context, but it must not be dazed by parochial illusions.

Decolonization for those neither Indigenous and settler in the Philippines, then, is an anarchy that is specific to our nature. It is one that is cognizant of our history and post-coloniality, one that moves beyond the nation-state system and restores the cosmopolitanism and hybridity and overcomes the parochialism of the nation. Decolonial anarchism is one indigenized and creolized to fit the specific circumstance and context of the people. Decolonial anarchy is one that works hand-in-hand for land-back for those with homelands and ancestral domains, and one that restores our relationship with the land without succumbing to appropriation.

But decolonial anarchism and anarchy is still a project in flux, not just in the Philippines, but across Southeast Asia and the global south. These notes are only one part in the continuing conversation on its indigenization and creolization.

 

Marion Koshy – Eulogy For Houston SRA 

Posted on 14/12/2024 - 14/12/2024 by muntjac

This peice was featured in Muntjac Magazine Issue 1

For the first time in a long time, I opened my organizing e-mail. I expected an invitation to a membership orientation for another organization, however, I received an unexpected message informing me about the shutdown of the Houston Chapter of the Socialist Rifle Association (“SRA”). A mix of emotions swept over me, but i felt some sort of sorrow. It wasn’t wholly unexpected, the chapter had been bleeding in terms of activity for over a year, and for months now, less than a handful of people attended the weekly meetings. The Chapter Central Committee had put forth a “death date” that already passed months ago, and I suspected the only reason why it came now was that everyone remotely involved in organizing in the Houston SRA finally decided to pull the trigger through a haze of burn out.

It might be a faux pas as an anarchist, specifically one that disavows left unity and is somewhat of a sectarian, to mourn the passing of a chapter of the Socialist Rifle Association. However, it was precisely because of my experience in the Houston Socialist Rifle Association that shaped me into becoming the anarchist I am today. I first hand experienced the failings of left unity, and the drawbacks of a bureaucratic socialist organization through the Houston SRA. Beyond that, I had a long history with the Socialist Rifle Association in general.

As a brown person in America, I always knew that my existence was under threat. Especially as someone who was born after 9/11, I was intimately familiar that because of my brownness, I was seen as a “terrorist”. I was one of the few South Asian students in my school, and I frequently faced verbal abuse and marginalization because I vaguely looked “middle eastern”. In fact, a common “joke” in my middle school was that I was “most likely to become a terrorist”, and this perception was not helped by my inept social skills which was significantly exacerbated by my Autism and ADHD.

This fear continued to grow when Donald Trump got elected on a platform of xenophobia. The mask fully slipped off, and it was clear that to some, in order to “Make America Great Again”, it meant “Make America White Again”. I was 14 years old at the time, and incredibly disillusioned at the time, I decided that liberalism was no longer viable politics for me. A system that fundamentally allowed open white supremacy in mainstream politics despite decades of so-called “progress” was not a system I could be invested in. I turned towards left-wing politics. I searched on the internet for spaces that embodied this new world view of mine, and I came across a few subreddits (I know, I was a redditor.), including the Socialist Rifle Association. I specifically re-call thinking to myself, “Well, if there’s a conservative organization called the ‘National Rifle Association’, there ought to be a Socialist Rifle Association.” To my surprise and excitement, I found the Socialist Rifle Association.

I followed the subreddit since then, but it was not the catalyst of my political development. That came from other conversations with likeminded people on other areas of the internet, but I still held the desire to learn self-defense from a left wing perspective. I saw posts praising community defense organizations like “Redneck Revolt”, and the thought of leftists actually fighting back against an emboldened and militarized right appealed to me immensely. I joined a Socialist Rifle Association Discord and mostly lurked there. I gleaned some perspectives on firearms and community defense from a leftist perspective, and I was happy to be in a space where self-defense against white supremacy was especially advocated.

I joined the actual Socialist Rifle Association a few years later, as soon as I turned 18. In the aftermath of the George Floyd Uprising, it felt important to be part of a space that actively taught marginalized people to defend themselves from oppression. It was almost the biggest space and most accessible space for that information. After a brief discord video interview, I joined the Houston Chapter of the Socialist Rifle Association.

Life got in the way, especially as I was starting college. I never became active until a particularly traumatic breakup, and I decided the best use of my free time was to be spent organizing. I took stock of all the leftist organizations I joined at the time, and I decided to throw myself into the Houston Chapter of the SRA.

A core memory of mine was driving nearly an hour to a gun range for a range day with some of my high school friends who were also like minded. We were some sort of affinity group and we were especially radicalized. We were all very excited, but also very scared. We were black and brown teenagers, and the day before we all went to Academy to get some ammo for the expropriated .38 Special Revolver that a friend took from his far right god father.

We were quite late to the range day, and no one was there to introduce themselves to us. The range day organizers left us to our own devices, a bunch of young black and brown teenagers, with a .38 special in a plastic bag to figure out membership. By the time we got to the range, almost everyone left. But one of the range day organizers let us shoot the last of his 9mm out of his CZ Pistol. It was my first time shooting. The gravity of the situation set in as I loaded the magazine, my hands trembling and my palms were especially clammy as I wrapped my hand around the grip. The comrade who owned the pistol casually showed me how to properly hold it, and how to properly stand. My finger pulled the metallic trigger, and a ferocious bang escaped, and I flinched greatly due to the loud sound.

There was something to be said about political power flowing out of the barrel of a gun. As the slide reset and the casing fell on the wooden range bench, I felt power coursing through my veins. I fashioned myself as a “serious revolutionary” at the time, and to me, firing that CZ was the first step to living out my beliefs. In between January 6th, the George Floyd Uprising, the Pandemic, and other developments, me and my friends felt like we were preparing to fight on the barricades. After I shot the CZ my friends took turns, flinching like I had. We also loaded the .38 special and one by one, shot the revolver. A successful range day by our metrics.

After that range day, I started regularly attending the chapter meetings. Desparate to throw myself into work, I started off as a notetaker. I apparently impressed the Chapter Central Committee with my usage of the basic Google Docs minutes sheet template, and I got ingrained into the culture of the local chapter.

I also helped set up their mutual aid distribution project. It was primarily going out to encampments and handing out supplies. We were rather inexperienced so we ended up having to carry large boxes while hopping fences, over gates, and handing out water and other supplies. We even handed out canned goods too, which reflecting back on, was well-intentioned but rather silly.

I interviewed people for the membership welfare committee, an internal body within the organization responsible for mediating disputes and ensuring that instances of racism, transphobia, and sexism didn’t occur. Despite this, there were a few occassions were such instances happened, which led to a few blowups within the org. An organization that primarily organized around firearm training unfortunately attracts leftists who never learned to shed their machismo. I remember a few confrontations in the organization over this. This experience taught me to look out for such tendencies in organizing spaces.

The stark differences in ideology within the Houston Chapter stood out as well. Everyone from anarchists, social democrats, to hardcore stalinists existed within the chapter and it was the source of a lot of contention in the organization. People often debated both in the voice chat and in the channels, and it caused further strife. Fully committed to left unity, I never participated in these discussions despite calling myself an anarchist, and I tried to be amicable with all sides.

After this, I was voted in as part of the Chapter Central Committee as Secretary. I helped organize their biweekly meetings, and started hosting range days. Despite being a full time college student, I committed to hosting biweekly range days, which helped hone my marksmanship, and I’m especially infinitely grateful for the comrades in the organization who showed me how to shoot, how to clean my guns, and overall be competent in the usage of firearms.

On a similar note, my membership in the Houston SRA helped create many long term relationships. While unfortunately, I have either lost contact, or fell out with some people, I’ve created a few long lasting relationships that exist to this day. Without the Houston SRA, I don’t think I would have been as a prolific organizer that I am today.

On a bigger note, it can be argued that the Houston SRA shares a big responsibility in the formation of SCAO. I, and a few of the members took over the Houston SRA’s unhoused distribution program, and formed Houseless Distro, creating SCAO. The lessons I learned from SRA have definitely transferred over to SCAO. To some extent, SCAO does owe part of its birth to the Houston SRA.

While I spend a lot of this eulogy talking about core memories and positive aspects of the Houston SRA, I think it’s important to note its failings. The constant infighting that happened in the Houston SRA was a product of the SRA’s inherent big tent organizational style. While other organizations such as DSA still continue to move forward in spite of its big tent model, I think that the SRA, through the nature of being an organization that organizes around firearms and self-defense, attracts dogmatic people. Furthermore, there were constant issues of machismo, and the usual instances of sexual assault and abuse, that were particularly more dangerous in the context of a firearms based organization.

The Houston SRA started dying shortly after some of its most committed members decided that the SRA was too bureaucratic, or not ideological enough for their goals. This resulted in several splits that the chapter never recovered from. While there were a few mutual aid events, or socials, or even range days, they started becoming few and far between. Personally, my observation of the conflict within the Houston SRA helped me move past big-tent politics. I also was frustrated by the constant scandals coming out of various chapters, and I decided to focus my efforts on SCAO instead.

I know a few comrades that decided to stay and try to weather the storm. Their commitment to the organization even years after peak activity in the chapter is admirable. I am especially sympathetic because they put so much time and effort to keep the chapter going. However, I think in some ways, maybe firearms advocacy on the left has evolved since then. Maybe the Socialist Rifle Association model of organizing isn’t as viable or popular as it used to be.

An unfortunate by-product of the SRA, not just the organization but its culture cultivated of a sort of left wing gun culture that in some ways, mirrors the right. Fetishization of weapons as a commodity rather than a tool, worshipping the aesthetics of COMBLOC nations, and the idea that community defense only extends to the individual act of buying a gun are issues that I saw repeatedly in not just the Houston Chapter of the SRA, or even the Socialist Rifle Association, but across left wing spaces that advocated for armed self defense.

Furthermore, organizing in Houston is perilous. “Houston” as a region extends more than 50 miles, and having a consistent organization that has reoccuring activities is a challenge. Organizations and local formations come and go, their days are like grass and they bloom like the flowers of the field. I think it might be a bit naive to think that the Houston Chapter would go on for especially a long time.

However, I echo the sentiment in the message sent out to all members of the Houston Chapter of the Socialist Rifle Association. The closure of the chapter is not a loss. It has lead to the formation of multiple local organizations, and it has taught many marginalized people how to shoot, and how to defend themselves. That is a feat that is worth noting regardless. While my heart aches at the closing of this chapter, it serves a lesson that organizations aren’t permanent, and that closure does not mean defeat. We can learn from the failures of the Houston Chapter of Socialist Rifle Association, and come up with questions on how we can do better by ourselves and marginalized people.

 

Dare to Struggle, Dare to Win.

All Power to the People.

 

Micelio – Untitled 

Posted on 14/12/2024 - 14/12/2024 by muntjac

This peice was featured in Muntjac Magazine Issue 1

To the rhythm of the spontaneous glissando of the clarinet in the Gershwinian rhapsody, buildings appear on the horizon of what one soon

imagines can be no other thing but Manhattan. An anonymous worker enters the scene alongside the characteristic muted trumpet, and the workday begins. His first action is, naturally, to check his watch: permanence and internalisation of time, reminding him of its scarcity and disturbing the everyday routine from the first minute of the day, slicing time itself and transforming it into something that, like any other commodity, is consumed.

A newspaper flying through the streets reads “jobs scarce,” while a white-collar worker in a diner can’t pay his bill. A zoo of people moves through the monster-city to a rhythm set by clocks and metallic instruments. A century after its debut, the Rhapsody in Blue has evolved along with its audience. From its first listeners in the now-defunct Aeolian Hall to the first frames of Woody Allen’s Manhattan, and into various generations through Disney, in a short film that, while celebrating the history of one of the most iconic cities for bourgeois societies, highlights the working class as the economic and driving force of change, contrasting their role in the production of wealth, both material and cultural, with that of the bourgeoisie.

This constant bombardment of images and slogans is no coincidence. The media through which the bourgeoisie disseminates an ideology that generates a sense of defeat and powerlessness in the face of economic forces have accompanied state apparatuses since the origins of bourgeois societies, disabling worker agency by shaping individual perception into one that feels powerless in the face of the labour market’s blows, halting the formation of groups that could confront the mechanisms by which the gap between social classes widens.

In Latin America, processes of late industrialization at the beginning of the 20th century were surrounded by the creation of an institutional framework centred on labour exploitation. In several Latin American countries, large extraction companies were established in regions favourable to mining activities. Management began to instil an industrial capitalist ethic of time and work, and one of their main strategies was to promote the traditional family structure. Under an extractivist and patriarchal logic, neighbourhoods, schools, roads, and recreation spaces were created so that new generations could serve the extractivist capitalism that mostly benefited the U.S. It was in these working-class

communities that struggles to balance working conditions within production centres arose, and a marked tendency to defend the right to unionise spread throughout the 20th century, same which has declined with the neoliberal turn and is now in crisis in many countries. History gives us an example from 1974: the Cinsa-Cifunsa strike in Saltillo, capital of Coahuila, on the Mexico-U.S. border. The company employed 10,000 workers, representing 10% of Saltillo’s population at the time and, as often happens in Mexico, had a protectionist union aligned with the government under the Confederation of Mexican Workers (Confederación de Trabajadores de México, CTM), which helped simulate any contractual regulation and protect its own interests. Led by 23-year-old Salvador Alcaráz, factory workers rejected the collective labour agreement with the CTM and called for a strike, demanding a 35% wage increase. Initially, they achieved victory, that in the medium term, due to pressures from the government, in collusion with business owners, the church, and the media, got undermined. After the movement was dismantled, Saltillo became a city where it is common practice for foreign automotive companies to invest and abuse the economic and political power granted by the Mexican government and phoney unions.

From a classical Marxism perspective, unions are seen as having political potential capable of undoing the progress made by employers and providing a platform that, in seeking the association of the working class, offers means to fight for the suppression of competition in the market, driven by commodified labour sold to corporations. After all, wage labour rests on the competition workers have among themselves within the market, and the pattern of industrial progress paradoxically creates conditions for workers to unite in groups that advocate for shared goals. The optimism with which unionism has been viewed is, however, nuanced within the same Marxist tradition: the nature of wage labour generates struggles that seek to improve the sale of their commodity (their labour power) without having revolutionary power to combat capital. The spontaneity that union movements may or may not claim is subordinated to bourgeois ideology and is therefore criticised for deepening workers’ ideological enslavement by the bourgeoisie.

It is important to nuance the different theoretical readings of the importance of union movements as engines of radical change with the field experience in multiple locations. There is no simpler way to explain the formation and importance of unions than by understanding the need workers have to organise and defend their rights, to push for their own interests, which are opposed to those of factory managers. No bureaucracy, reformism, or state coercion has removed the right to unionise. The fact that unions nest in production points gives them a fundamental tool in their battles against capitalism. While not all demands can be won within the jurisdiction erected by bourgeois society, even the most bureaucratic union can create cracks that shake employers, generating circumstances that clash with the imperatives of a capitalist state. In unionism lies a communal union in spirit, unable to be fully integrated into the society of which it is a part.

Setting aside any theoretical debate about the effectiveness of unionism as a revolutionary force, the reality is that class domination in modern societies can be (and is) challenged by collective experiences in the struggle to defend our rights. In this context, the axis of action in the workplace is revealed as a vehicle through which collective power can not only change the material conditions of those who offer their labour power but also revive the collective imagination around better possible worlds, introduce new myths that allow us to move toward them from multiple fronts, and defeat current narratives of progress that plunge people into a defeatist nihilism, obscuring the structural causes of social, economic, and environmental collapse.

In Colombia, for example, working women organised to expose the false “labour peace” and perpetuation of gender roles. In February 1920, four hundred women and one hundred men from Colombia’s largest textile factory, the Medellín Textile Company (Compañía de Tejidos de Medellín), went on strike. After twenty-four days of striking, the demonstrators won recognition of their demands: a 40% wage increase, the reduction of the workday to nine hours and fifty minutes, the regulation of the fine system, and better hygiene conditions. They also succeeded in firing supervisors accused of rape and administrators hostile to the workers. In Mexico, during the 70s, a group of Maoist workers within the Volkswagen (VW) factory in Puebla managed to break away from a corrupt industrial union tied to the CTM. They formed an independent, democratic union, with regular elections and collective bargaining that improved their working conditions.

In September 2024, this very same union achieved a 10.59% wage increase. In the same month, VW announced the closure of its factories in German territory due to internal costs, putting more than 300,000 workers’ jobs at risk and shifting labour costs to cheaper markets, showing the neocolonial nature of modern industry.

Among unionist movements, there are various currents that today seek to rebuild the class consciousness that neoliberalism has eroded. For different collectives, the urgency of reclaiming the historical causes of the workers’ struggle has become clear: reduction of working hours, dignified working conditions, collectivization of labour, redistribution of profits, etc. In the search for new horizons of struggle, it is necessary to rescue the historical vehicles of resistance while undermining the mechanisms that have allowed the bourgeois state to reinforce a production system that not only exploits workers but also spreads a subjectivity that seeks to render us inoperative in the face of systemic injustices.

Not all struggles against labour precarization on the periphery arise from coordinated union movements: we know that the state and employers have co-opted many unions, that the union figure, in its current form, is a conduit for workers’ demands but also a brake on their resistance. We also know that thousands of workers fight from their daily routine, individually or collectively, and that on the margins of unionism, they explore, weave, and form various strategies to build movements that allow them to reclaim their workplaces. Increasingly, cross-border solidarity networks are emerging as vital forms of resistance and support for clandestine struggles and direct action. We call on every worker to not let go, to not lose the dream of creating independent unions that break free from corporate powers.

The spirit of communal union knows no borders, and through solidarity we will be able to resist the storms to come, and find platforms to reimagine ourselves.

Micelio are a small collective collaborating with independent industrial unions in northern Mexico. 

You can follow them on twitter @MicelioRojo & on Instagram @micelio_rojo 

Sunwo – On the Forgotten so-called Race Riot.

Posted on 14/12/2024 - 16/12/2024 by muntjac

In 1958, at a pub in St. Ann’s, Nottingham, police were called in response to a disturbance. Eyewitnesses reported that it all kicked off over the refusal of service to an interracial couple, sparking a brawl. Some say over 1,000 people were involved; others put it in the hundreds. Either way, chaos filled the streets. If you look at the newspapers from the time, it’s all about “Black violence” and how many white people were injured. But here’s the thing—the evidence points to much of the violence being led by a white mob.

Let’s be clear: this wasn’t a race riot like they like to call it, this was a fascist attack, a pogrom. Black people who were there say white individuals from outside St. Ann’s showed up, forcing the community to fight back and protect themselves. The participation of potentially hundreds of white individuals was historically downplayed. Only through community accounts and extensive archival research has it become possible to uncover a clearer picture of what really went down. Another overlooked aspect is the prolonged police presence—sticking around for weeks afterward.

A few days later, another uprising happened in Notting Hill, some say that this uprising was spired on by the happening in Nottingham, where black forks had managed to fight off a racist mob. These encounters with white reactionary violence mark a pivotal time in the black experience in Britain.

This happened ten years after the first voyage of the Empire Windrush. The early immigrants of color in the UK tell a story of exclusion. Caribbean immigrants faced serious barriers to housing and employment, despite being invited to Britain to address labor shortages after World War II. They ended up making homes in cramped Victorian terraces, originally built for mill workers. While the country relied on immigrants, they were treated like outsiders, unable to access social spaces freely, unable to participate fully in society.

The Colour Bar in Britain worked like an informal apartheid, denying Black and brown people decent jobs, housing, and public spaces. It lasted in one form or another into the 1980s. Beyond that, they struggled just to have a normal community life.

And then there were the Teddy Boys—a racist gang emerging from white working-class youth culture. They harassed Black and Asian immigrants, making it dangerous to access certain areas. People who lived through it say this kind of intimidation carried on into the ’80s. Let’s face it: that same culture seeped into the punk scene of the 1980s. If you’ve ever seen This Is England, you know what I mean.

Through self-defense and resistance, Black and brown communities carved out their own safe spaces. They stood up against violence and refused to accept their assigned place in a racist hierarchy. It is not a coincidence that the conflict arose from the refusal of service of a interracial couple. It’s obvious that reactionary violence is tied to the insecurities of white working-class social conditions, tools used by those in power to spawn hate against marginalized groups. For black and brown people in the UK, Self-defense and rebellion became liberatory tools—to protect the community, to demand better treatment, and to push back against structural barriers enforced by the state.

So maybe we need to rethink the language we use. Instead of calling it a “race riot,” we should recognize it as a form of uprising, a rebellion, a moment of resistance. “Race riot” plays into the same old narratives that pit both sides against each other. Let’s call it what it was: an act of resistance.

Sources: 

blackpast.org/global-african-history/nottingham-riots-1958

bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-45207246

libcom.org/article/1958-nottingham-race-riots

 

Mutt. – Muntjac Issue 1 Editorial 

Posted on 14/12/2024 by muntjac

As ever, since the day we arrived here, it’s been up to us. 

The racialized peoples of this hellish archipelago… to defend ourselves. 

 

Let’s take a partial look at our collective histories of struggle…

 

In 1919, in Cardiff, Liverpool and East London racists targeted Chinese, Somali, West Indian (Caribbean),  Malaysian, Egyptian and other racialized residents, many of whom were British colonial troops stationed or demobilized in Britain, the racists also targeted their partners and spouses who were often white women. In response, at various intervals in Cardiff groups of whites that had formed lynch mobs found themselves in shootouts with the racialized people they tried to target.

 

In 1948, in Liverpool the National Union of Seamen strived to keep Black people out of work, boasting that “we have been successful in changing ships from coloured to white, and in many instances in persuading masters and engineers that white men should be carried in preference to coloured.” During an extended period of attack, Black sailors armed themselves to stave off attempted massacres by mobs of whites either in uniform or in plain clothes intent on destroying them, the lodgings they stayed in and the clubs they frequented. Often when the police ‘“intervened” in racial attacks on Black sailors they’d simply arrest every Black person in the area.

 

In 1958, the West Indian community of Notting Hill tooled up to fight fascists who’d been targeting them at night, utilizing ambush tactics and skills many had gained in their time in Britain’s colonial armed forces. One ex RAF mechanic, Baker Baron was interviewed years later and said;

 

“[…] black people were so frightened at that time that they wouldn’t leave their houses, they wouldn’t come out, they wouldn’t walk the streets of Portobello Road. So we decided to form a defence force to fight against that type of behaviour and we did. We organized a force to take home coloured people wherever they were living in the area. We were not leaving our homes and going out attacking anyone, but if you attack our homes you would be met, that was the type of defence force we had. We were warned when they were coming and we had a posse to guard our headquarters.

 

When they told us that they were coming to attack that night I went around and told all the people that was living in the area to withdraw that night. The women I told them to keep pots, kettles of hot water boiling, get some caustic soda and if anyone tried to break down the door and come in, to just lash out with them. The men, well we were armed. During the day they went out and got milk bottles, got what they could find and got the ingredients of making the Molotov cocktail bombs. Make no mistake, there were iron bars, there were machetes, there were all kinds of arms, weapons, we had guns.

 

We made preparations at the headquarters for the attack. We had men on the housetop waiting for them, I was standing on the second floor with the lights out as look-out when I saw a massive lot of people out there. I was observing the behaviour of the crowd outside from behind the curtains upstairs and they say, ‘Let’s burn the niggers, let’s lynch the niggers.’ That’s the time I gave the order for the gates to open and throw them back to where they were coming from. I was an ex-serviceman, I knew guerrilla warfare, I knew all about their game and it was very, very effective.

 

I says, ‘Start bombing them.’ When they saw the Molotov cocktails coming and they start to panic and run. It was a very serious bit of fighting that night, we were determined to use any means, any weapon, anything at our disposal for our freedom. We were not prepared to go down like dying dogs. But it did work, we gave Sir Oswald Mosley and his Teddy boys such a whipping they never come back in Notting Hill. I knew one thing, the following morning we walked the streets free because they knew we were not going to stand for that type of behaviour.” 

 

In 1959 Kelso Colchrane, a Black Antiguan resident of Notting Hill was stabbed to death by whites, in response Rhaune Laslett, Claudia Jones, Amy Ashwood Garvey and other revolutionaries put on an indoor Carnival to empower the besieged Black communities of Britain. With time, these gatherings grew so large they out-grew the halls they were held in and were the groundwork to what is now a cultural institution for the West Indian communities in Britain. The Notting Hill carnival.

 

In 1968, Trinidadian revolutionary Frank Crichlow opened the Mangrove restaurant which quickly became a hub for Black people to seek shelter from the racist hellscape around them and organise their fight back against the British state. In fear of this, the police raided and shut down the restaurant a dozen times. Attacks like this against Black community centers, cafes, clubs and even daycares were surprisingly common.

 

In 1970, 150 Black radicals protested against the police’s war on the mangrove  and were met with a force of over 600 police officers, who assaulted the marchers leading to the arrest and trial which would later be known as the Mangrove 9. They won in court after a long trial and the police’s assault on the Mangrove carried on until the 80s, in 1988 Frank was framed after riot police raided the restaurant and ‘found’ drugs. After a trial he was acquitted and was awarded damages in 1992.

 

Throughout the 70s the Bengali Housing Action Group, the Black Panthers & Race Today collective squatted homes to house immigrants in spite of the racist local government & landlords.

 

Brixton was a borough plagued by policing and constant searches under the racist ‘Sus’ laws, enabling the police to stop and search people whenever the hell they felt like, this tactic was paired with arbitrary raids, beatings and surveillance.  This was responded to in a myriad of ways; Black power organisations set up infoshops and educated their peers as part of a broader campaign against police harassment. Some squatted in buildings to drink smoke and listen to reggae in spite of the police. Some would intervene with the police when they began to harass someone.

 

In 1976, an 18 year old engineering student, Gurdip Singh Chaggar, was stabbed to death. The Indian Workers Association [Southall] organized a meeting on facism, but the youth attending the meeting grew frustrated with the “timid” bureaucratic, lobbyist approach of their elders and the lack of a concrete response to Chaggar’s murder. Opting instead for direct action, they left the meeting to protest against Southall’s police for its inaction, and in the process ended up throwing stones at a Jaguar who’s driver called them “black bastards”. Shortly after, they launched the Southall Youth Movement (SYM). In the days that followed, they organized a number of protests, attacked white motorists who chanted racist slurs at them and when their comrades were arrested, surrounded the police station demanding their release. These new formations would be later described by Race today as “breaking through the solid wall of Asian organisations which maintained the status quo”

 

August, 1976, police assaulted Black attendees of the Notting Hill Carnival and they defended themselves and injured over 300 police officers, damaged 35 police vehicles and looted shops. The repression that followed led to the arrest of 60. Rasta Billy, a former steel pan player at Carnivals commented that;

“Carnival became the first opportunity that many of the black youths born in Britain had to express their anger on a national basis and to confront the police and let them know the forces of black anger.”

 

In 1980 Akhtar Ali Baig was brutally murdered on East Ham high street by a gang of white, skinhead youths aged 15 to 17, who first verbally abused him before spitting on him and eventually stabbing him. Paul Mullery, the one who stabbed him exclaimed in front of eyewitnesses “I’ve just gutted a paki!” He was soon arrested, In response 150 Asian and some West Indian youth marched to Forest Gate police station, the police claimed it wasn’t a racially motivated attack. Later 2,500 people marched through Newham in a protest organised by Newham Youth Movement, they planned to march to Forest Gate and West Ham police stations and then return to the murder location, the police tried to re-route them towards West Ham Park but the youth broke through chanting “Here to stay, Here to fight!” and “Self Defense is no offense!” On reaching the site of the murder spot, the march stopped to pay its respect to Akhtar. A mullah chanted some prayers from the Koran  There were 29 arrests and in response the youths met with the Steering Committee Of Asian Organisations to drum up support and put on a second march, 5,000 people attended, Black workers from Ford’s downed tools and (in a rare, minor, piece of middle class racial solidarity) shopkeepers shut their shops for the day.

 

April 10th, 1981, the boiling tension following the racist mass murder of 13 Black teenagers in the firebombing of a house in New Cross into an anti-police insurrection, Michael Bailey, a Black man who had just been stabbed in Brixtons ‘frontline’ was being kneeled on by police for over 20 minutes. People nearby intervened and forced the cops away from him and took him to hospital, they then fought with the police reinforcements that had been sent in. The following day, the police lined the streets every 50 meters with vans, rather than their usual foot patrols. Word got round that Michael had died in hospital, no small part due to the police allowing him to bleed out for so long. At 5pm a plainclothes cop was bricked for trying to search a Black man’s car, police attempted to arrest the bricklayer but eventually battle lines were drawn. By the end of the night there were 279 injured cops, 50+ destroyed police vehicles and several buildings and shops burnt out and looted.

 

July 3rd, 1981 three coachloads of white skinheads from the East End arrive in Southall for a gig at a bar called the Hambrough Tavern, on the way there they attacked shopfronts run by Asian people and assaulted one Asian woman, in response Asian and West Indian youth struck back, the police came in to defend the skins but by the end of the night the skins were sent packing, several police officers were injured and the Hambrough was burnt to a crisp. The youth said to the media the following day;

 

“If the police will not protect our community, we have to defend ourselves.”

 

Throughout July 1981 There were further anti-police and anti-racist uprisings in Toxteth, Moss Side, Chapeltown and again in Brixton. There were so many I’d run out of space if I covered them all properly.

 

1982, The Sari Squad, a group of radical South Asian women began their campaign in solidarity with Afia Begum who had been deported to Bangladesh after her husband died in a fire. They established a social center in London’s Brick Lane. The following year they would tie themselves to the railings outside the home secretaries home, they were later arrested and sexually assaulted by the police.

 

In 1983, a collective of diasporic South Asian women founded Mukti magazine, with the intention of creating a publication to address the under-discussed concerns of South Asian women in the (politically) Black movement of the time. Topics such as deportation, citizenship, sexual fulfilment, lesbianism, arranged marrage, incest and child sexual abuse were presented in 6 different languages. They had a wheelchair accessible office and hosted meetings for groups like the Incest Survivors Group, Asian Women Youth Workers Group, and Aurat Shakti exhibition group.

 

September 1985, armed cops had gone to Cherry Groce’s home, in Normandy Road (Brixton), to find her son, Michael, who was wanted for armed robbery. Mrs Groce said the cops rammed down her door and then ran at her pointing a gun, she moved backwards and they shot her. She was paralysed and confined to a wheelchair by her injuries. In response people mobilized outside Brixtons police station and a group of Black women cussed out the police, it wasn’t until the police wheeled out a ‘community leader’ and a Black priest intended to deescalate the situation that the molotov cocktails began to fly.

 

December 13th 1995, another Black uprising took place after the murder of Wayne Douglas, in police custody. Black lumpen and their mates fought back against police, ransacked shops and burned cars for five hours.

 

December 1999, five Chinese restaurant workers, who had had to defend themselves against a white attack in London’s Chinatown, were themselves arrested. (This incident is a repeat of what happened in a similar attack in the same restaurant 13 years prior)

 

June 5th 2001, in Harehills, Leeds the South Asian community stood up to the police who had beat a South Asian man for having a “faulty tax disk”, they organised an ambush using a hoax 999 call, ironically reporting that a police officer had been struck with a molotov cocktail, the police arrived and the insurgents threw molotov cocktails and stones at them and fought the police into the night for their friend.

 

In August 2011, a young Black woman initiated the Mark Duggan Rebellion by throwing stones at a crowd of police who were looming around at a vigil for Mark, the police responded by beating her and the crowd rushed fight them off, the crowd, in control of the streets started to loot shops, that summer the whole country burned. Only after a police crackdown of an unimaginable scale combined with meddling leftists & the Black liberal counterinsurgency did the flames die out.

 

In 2016, London Black Revolutionaries and the Malcolm X Movement released insects into a Byron Burger restaurant in response to the Chain conspiring with border force in a sting operation which led to the deportation of 35 migrant workers from Albania, Brazil, Egypt, and Nepal.

 

In 2021, a collective of radical Black squatters called House of Shango, inspired by the legacy of Black revolutionary and squatter Olive Morris distributed free food and clothing every Sunday in Windrush square.

 

In 2022, the government warned of a coming economic crisis of their own creation, in response Autonomous Black Queers distributed free guides on shoplifting, fare evading and electric-meter tweaking.

 

On top of all of this, we can’t forget the prison rebels who fought against racism on the inside in our past like Biba Sarkaria or the countless more that have carried on the tradition since. There are of course, daily little resistances, fights, scuffles, people slacking off at work, stealing from the businesses robbing us of our money and time.

 

On the 18th of July this year, in Harehills, Leeds; children were kidnapped from the home of a Romani family by police on the orders of social workers. In response the community came out and fought the police demanding the children be returned, into the dead of night, successfully fighting off riot police. Bonfires were lit to obscure the police’s line of sight, though one was extinguished by Mothin Ali, a green party politician who actually mentioned his uncles getting repressed following the 2001 harehills uprising as the reason why he and his cohort acted as a counterinsurgent force.  The following day the parents went on a hunger strike and days later the children were released back into their care.

 

In November last year, viral misinformation following a stabbing was spread on telegram by fascists in Ireland, raising the temperature just enough that the pre-existing racism, anti-blackness and Islamophobia amongst the white Irish lumpen, working, middle and ruling classes could boil over into an attempt to stalk the city center, jumping anyone darker than a sheet of paper. They failed, with the 2nd night going out with a whimper, rather than another bang.

 

In England, Cornwall, Wales, Scotland and “Northern Ireland” we weren’t as lucky. Starting in Southport, then spreading to other towns and cities. This wave of white violence resulted in assaults on racialized people, stalking of racialized people, the destruction of buildings used to house refugees, personal and private property belonging to racialized people from homes to shopfronts, cars to community fridges and numerous attacks on mosques.

 

The British state, under supercop Keir Starmer’s “patriotic” & “left wing” leadership, gave us ever increased police powers, the further criminalization of self defence, mask bans and the familiar high speed court processes Kier was a part of as a prosecutor during the Mark Duggan Rebellion in 2011  leaving antifascists with little time to defend themselves in court and the use of the charge of ‘Affray’ which was created to curtail anti-police street militancy by the Black communities of London has been utilized again  to a great extent as a tool of repression.

 

Labor and Green party politicians and their supporters attended some protests with the sole purpose of preventing anything other than newspaper sales happening. After all, for many of them it was the first time “the left” were in power during a period of unrest and of course, we can’t upset the police when they’re ‘on side’ right?

 

The extra-parliamentary Left complemented this with the near-immediate Trotskyist-led dampener on resistance, a well-rehearsed program of peace policing, often going as far as standing between the police and militant demonstrators, standing in front of targeted buildings for photo-ops and then bailing when the fascists turned up. Leading people the wrong direction (both literally and figuratively) selling newspapers while projectiles were being lobbed at them, a counterinsurgent politic culminating in a collaboration with a group of washed up social democratic politicians hosting a ‘resistance festival’ of white people patting themselves on the back for spending weeks bussing themselves into London to talk to the police.

 

Finally and in the most depressing, but not at all suprising display of all, Many “radicals” in the “POC, BAME & ESEA” organising circles joined forces with the assimilationist middle class in advocating ‘staying at home’ and staying “safe” and working with the police to utilize hate crime legislation to encourage even more police into our neighbourhoods.

 

The antifascist response to the race riots this summer was sluggish in places, most were blindsided by the sheer number of whites willing to march around in broad daylight chanting racist & islamophobic slogans and how many white youth were willing to smash the windows of peoples homes because they believed the residents weren’t white enough. However once the ball got rolling, the fightback that ‘organised’ autonomous anti-fascists and racialized communities across the country put back were awe inspiring.

 

Crowds of teenagers ignoring the warnings from the peace policing ‘community elders’ donning what is essentially black bloc and confronting fascists in the streets, traveling to support communities in other towns in response to fascists announcing plans to march in towns all over the region. People forming networks of support for vulnerable members of their communities, providing each other with transport and even seemingly trivial things like checking in on each other on the regular.

 

However, former Black Panther, JoNina Ervin’s comment in an interview a few years ago about how antifascism can’t just be event based if it’s going to become part of the culture has stuck with me. We have to deal with how people are facing daily racism and daily policing. We have to create survival programs to help people live with the crushing living costs here.

 

Following the dying down of this round of race riots, radicals got to work supporting those arrested for defending themselves, for example; After this year’s Notting Hill Carnival, radicals, in the spirit of the original carnival, put on a fundraiser at an illegal rave, which raised £4000 in donations despite police repression.

 

Weeks ago Romani and Irish Traveler youth were targeted by Manchester police in a racially motivated operation and forced onto trains out of the city center. Soon after this, the Kurdish community in London were targeted by police repression with a community center being raided and dozens of people being arrested.

 

Bashar Al-Assad was overthrown days ago and in response the British state & states elsewhere are looking to deport Syrian asylum seekers into an active war zone as the civil war and genocidal campaign against Syria’s ethnic minorities, aided and backed by the Turkish state and its fascist proxies is nowhere near over.

 

Throughout the history of the struggles of racialized people here, there has been an insurgent tendency who have rejected the pacifistic stewardship of middle class & reformist political groups who constantly have worked with the police and the government to assert themselves as self-declared ‘leadership’ of their respective cultures and nationalities.

 

Our aim as a group is to amplify the voices of this tendency, with the race riots this summer and the response to it being a catalyst for us to come together. Many of us are either one of the few anarchists in our culture’s diasporic radical community or one of the few people who aren’t white in our local anarchist scene and as such there’s a need to create something without both of these restrictions, without having to water down anarchist texts into the often vague language used by sectors of the Asian and Black radical movements or to have our thoughts filtered through the all white editorial boards in charge of the majority of anarchist publications here. Are you doing cool shit, have something to say, knowledge to share? Let’s work together and burn Babylon once and for all.

 

Mutt, Muntjac Magazine

13/12/24

 

“Mutt.” is a pen name of a Bajan Mulatto anarchist, you can find more of his writing and research on his website. Stalk his stuff here; linktr.ee/muttworks

naga – Fear, Safety and Representasians

Posted on 14/12/2024 - 14/12/2024 by muntjac

This essay is featured in Issue 1 Of Muntjac

NOTE: In this piece I use the terms “(British) East & South East Asian” (BESEA) and “Asian American”  in a loose, critical way. It names a particular tendency and group of people who engage in such politics, the sort that might self-characterise as being “anti-covid hate” or “Stop Asian / AAPI / ESEA Hate”. My comrades and I remain sceptical that a “(B)ESEA” political identity as recoverable even as we sometimes organise under it to do certain things. 

 

I am writing to sketch out the current reactionary basis for community self-defence in Asian American and BESEA politics. Instead of continuing to beg for crumbs of state validation and protection from cops, we need to continue the proliferation of resistance against state violence.

 

We’ll begin with a brief description of the situation in the so-called U.S., as BESEA groups appear to view Asian American activity as somehow more advanced and it’s important to show this is not the case.

 

From 2021 onwards, various news articles in the so-called US reported a rise in Asian Americans taking self-defense classes [1] and purchasing guns. [2] This was in response to an escalation in racist street violence against Asians; the attacks which gained the most media attention created a narrative of white male vigilantes or Black homeless men specifically targeting Asian American women and elders. Anti-Black racism is inherent to these politics. While some Asian American organisations might post instagram slides that celebrate Juneteenth or offer condolences for Black victims of police violence, it’s clear from the rest of their social media messaging, co-operation with similar organisations, state bodies and public figures that their primary goal is assimilating Asian Americans into the colonial violence inherent to the US state through the protection of private property. A previous realisation of such politics includes the so-called Rooftop Koreans, petit bourgeois Asian settlers who sought to defend their businesses during the L.A. uprising in the 90s by attacking Black people.[3] It is therefore no surprise that when community self-defence is grounded in Asian American “Stop Asian Hate” (SAH) politics, its participants fill the role of self-deputised police rather than opposing state violence and neglect.

 

And yet there is a contradiction: for all their messaging that Asians need to be responsible for protecting “our own”, SAH social media content is largely aimed at applying pressure on police to investigate violent attacks and indeed all racial animus as “hate crimes”, celebrating weighty sentencing that apparently shows the state considers such animus as injurious to its own social body. [4] Journalist Esther Wang reported on such ‘desperate, confused, righteous’ politics of SAH in 2022, focusing on the aftermath of Christina Yuna Lee’s murder by a street homeless man from a nearby encampment. She writes, ‘A bitterness was beginning to take hold — a sense of grievance that was hardening into a politics of self-protection.'[5] Her article describes in detail the reactionary bent of SAH politics: Christina Yuna Lee’s former landlord carrying a taser and pepper spray in order to attack homeless people, community objections to any housing support for their neighbours on the street, and Asian self-defense training clubs that espouse theories of racial self-interest. Wang makes clear that while such paranoid responses have an understandable root cause, they’re not solutions to deep societal problems or everyday trauma.

 

In all this, it’s made clear the condition of being made vulnerable to homelessness, of gentrification, displacement, criminalisation and incarceration, is not understood as violent within the rubric of SAH politics. The reality of the U.S. as a settler-colonial project and how it constructs and orders race to situate certain populations close to death in literal spatial terms is seen as merely aberrant, rather than consistent with its death-making project. A slightly more canny tendency of SAH politics pays lip service to non-carceral advocacy, which can be seen in recent Stop AAPI Hate statements condemning the killings of Easter Leafa, Victoria Lee, and Sonya Massey[6] by police which consistently call for ‘in-language’ and ‘culturally sensitive’ responses to mental health crises, demanding ‘accountability’ for this ‘misconduct.’ Again, the idea that such violence is entirely consistent with the state is not permitted; it would interrupt their redemptive fantasy of the state as an all-giving caregiver who simply needs to draw its lesser favoured child closer to its breast.

 

This is what abolitionist Dylan Rodríguez describes as the ‘”Asian Exception”‘; “Black on Asian” violence is but one folkdevil used to kick dirt over the tracks of what Rodríguez calls ‘white nationalist, domestic warfare totality’ for which state-enforced punishment of individualised perpetrators is an insufficient response as said totality is ‘a) cold-blooded as fuck, and b) doesn’t give a shit about individuals in-and-of-themselves.’ [7] Citing critical Asian American organising by sex workers, abolitionist feminists, and prisoner support campaigns, Rodríguez encourages us to join the call for ‘collective practices of revolt, solidarity, creativity, and mutual aid that de-prioritize condemnation of individual perpetrators (Black, Brown, and otherwise) and cultivate infrastructures of accountability to other communities, organizations, and movements struggling for liberation from antiblackness, colonial domination, and asymmetrical domestic war.’ Rodríguez consistently draws attention to his own contradictory position within his own academic dayjob, observing that this position is filled with people whose embrace of liberal pacifism means they have a ‘knee-jerk aversion to guns and firearms.'[8] Because they prioritise individual knowledge extraction rather than being open to collective militancy, these people can be a real security risk to movements who see the necessity of self-defense.

 

You will never find me condemning armed resistance anywhere in the world. However, as I was researching community self-defense in an Asian American context, various critiques came to mind – mostly that armed struggle in the so-called U.S. has become synonymous with U.S. gun culture.

 

For example, Yellow Peril Tactical is an Asian American armed leftist pro-gun rights group with the aim of educating and training people in firearm handling, tactical training, and community defense. They also build connections with other armed leftists groups and medics, sharing this knowledge through their podcasts. They situate their project as an intervention in reactionary self-defense. All of this is valuable. However, as I listened to their discussions, I started thinking that perhaps some armed leftist groups position themselves as a subset within US gun culture who wish to explore their militarised hobby, rather than politicised organisations who have strategised the necessity of taking up arms through their own analysis of the state monopoly on violence.

 

I also noted that while there appears to be a willingness to wield coercive force, this sits alongside rather limited ways of looking at representation. For example, YPT’s inaugural podcast episode in 2021 began from the point of diversifying gun culture, with one speaker complaining about how hard it was to be a queer Asian woman in the gun world, and another speaker chiming in that there were now more diverse gun influencers. But I kept listening, and though I personally felt mildly irritated to hear this couched in terms of “misconceptions”, “representation” and “diversity”, YPT essentially described a serious situation where self-deputised white supremacist forces dominate the distribution of and training in firearms. YPT is also clearly interested in building meaningful solidarity across borders: they collaborate with various groups, raise funds for the village of Jinwar in Rojava as well as insurgents in Myanmar, which further clarifies their politics radically differ from the average liberal.

 

While YPT still proceed from an embedded position in U.S. gun culture, they are clear that firearms are to be used in specific situations and share information about different interventions, such as de-escalation, and complement tactical knowledge with field medicine. ‘Guns are not a talisman,’ YPT write in a recent infographic. [9] This ironically echoes a line in An Anarchist Anti-Gun Manifesto: ‘I think people acquire guns because of the fantasy of possessing hyper concentrated power.’ [10] This manifesto de-naturalises the role of guns in armed resistance, encouraging the expropriation then destruction of such weapons while  keeping in mind there are other ways of wielding force in domestic warfare.

 

Asian American organising is of course much more varied than the liberal NPIC or armed leftists, but I focused on these aspects as I feel it is currently under-theorised.

 

We now turn to the situation in the UK, which is similarly captured by counterinsurgency. The same calls for Stop Asian Hate rang out with predictable politics: a so-called Demonstration of Unity rally in spring 2021 collapsed due to brave groups[11] and individuals that refused to work with a speaker who was the subject of the Solidarity not Silence campaign about misogyny and abuse in music.[12] Liberal and conservative BESEAs do not have working analyses of how power structures function – they think capitalism and its concomitant violences are fine, their horizon of radical change being improved access for BESEAs. Add to this bizarre, self-fulfilling, British-poisoned Asian exceptionalism with its foundational anti-Blackness – animated through a frankly deranged focus on joy, food, and hate crime by NPIC careerists for whom small business ownership is their family background and political subjectivity – and you have the current BESEA movement in a nutshell. (Notable exceptions include the abolitionist tendency in some groups within ESEA Sisters; Remember & Resist;[13] and sex worker organising such as Sparrow’s Wings, not to mention individual Asians active across various solidarity movements, including antiraids networks.)

 

The situation in the UK can still be neatly described in The Monitoring Group’s statement about another rally later in 2021: ‘We asked the police to be present at the rally to ensure there would be no breach of peace. They requested further information and intelligence supporting our concerns. This was provided to them within minutes of their request.’ [14] The current BESEA political landscape is characterised by nonprofits and high-profile charitable individuals in full, unquestioning, eager co-operation with the state. Everybody circulates around the axis of “hate crime prevention”, for which a more comprehensive state surveillance is the solution. This is their goal and they refuse to see any other approach as valid, such as the abolitionist strategy of within and against realistically assesses what happens when the state intervenes in marginalised communities and situations with vulnerablised people.[15] BESEAs do not really have values that derive from the abolitionist tendency–for them, it’s radical to collaborate with hate crime charities to deliver bystander intervention workshops. You won’t find them at copwatch meetings learning about police interventions because that would mean caring about people other than themselves.

 

BESEAs are self-righteous about this self-interest because their political identity is based on being uniquely downtrodden and ignored. They don’t historicise Asian identity within the larger context of both colonial labour and colonial middlemen; they refuse any critical engagement with these contradictions. Rather, they propagandise narratives of the hardworking migrant rejected by both whites and other racialised groups; they write exhausting books and articles, appear on morning TV segments, curate whole exhibitions, circulate around the Having Conversations Industrial Complex, attend big dos at Buckingham Palace. What is their demand? Visibility–tolerance–and increased hate crime data collection. And afterwards, they’ll grab their newest LinkedIn profile picture.

 

When the pogroms of 2024 burst forth and communities rallied in the streets against fascists and their pig protectors, these BESEAs sat in their newbuild apartments and cried. They didn’t say, ‘We’re not good in crowds, we can be more useful co-ordinating from home or doing arrestee support afterwards’– no, their relation to these streets is not tactical. They exclusively communicate in a language of fear and unsafety. This was to be expected of the glossy fintech and media types, but a similar response was given by established community services that support migrants on the ground: report all “hate crime” to the police or a reporting service. Community services were in a position to create and share multi-lingual safety plans, to check in with their members and affirm solidarity with targeted groups. Instead, the “hate crime prevention” narrative was in easy reach for everyone, and it will continue that way until a viable alternative program for filling these social needs is created.

 

Meanwhile, the state’s border securitisation regime continues apace. Undocumented migrants, asylum seekers and refugees experience the sharpest edge of this vulnerablisation. They have also been discarded from the majority of BESEA discourses on public safety. Contextualising the deaths of the Essex 39 and the Morecambe Bay cockle pickers within the Hostile Environment would mean understanding the state as something other than saviour–how these social murders are consistent with its regime.[16]   Similarly, focusing on street attacks rather than how fascist organising works in tandem with state violence means that both material conditions and community needs are obscured. While there is a clear need for multilingual culturally-informed support services, tying it to the success of state-funded hate crime data collection practises diverts attention and resources from actually effective solutions.

 

Indeed, it is not straightforward for the public to understand how hate crime data is actually used by either police forces or reporting services; thus far there’s been no accountability from the “changemakers” who apparently use this data to make policy changes (for and by whom?). There are ways in which community groups could collect and analyse data using an actively caring methodology and robust ethical framework which targets the root causes of social problems, as shown by the Dying Homeless project by Museum of Homelessness.[17] Otherwise, it appears that a whole panoply of ESEA community centres and migrant support services are being funded, wholly or in part, by the state desire to monitor a narrow category of racial animus by non-state actors. As one possible use of state hate crime data reporting is assigning patrols in certain areas, liberal BESEAs have made it clear they are willing to treat increased police interactions and criminalisation of other communities as collateral.

 

There would be some utility in abolitionist ESEAs encouraging internal conversations within migrant support services, asking them how they benefit from involvement in this hate crime scheme. If it pays an already overloaded caseworker for a few more hours a week, then it’s important to name that this is not a sustainable solution for making our communities safer. Our responsibility, then, is to propose things that do work and build capacity towards realising this. One example is the community mediator program carried out by Asian American organisers in Oakland.[18] This robust, holistic approach fills many gaps, from intergenerational political education, Black-Asian solidarity, de-escalation, prisoner support, and housing.

 

Learning from their organising, perhaps our foundation in babylon would be clear, simple messaging that combats a narrative of distrust and fear, all while balancing an acknowledgement of people’s feelings of unsafety. Then, we ask people to really consider what safety means. We have to actually listen–even if we anticipate their answers won’t please us–because it builds trust and can sometimes be surprising. Then, we begin linking the specifics of the ESEA experience to shared material conditions and create accountability to other communities. For these ESEA migrant services and community centres, it might look like making meaningful connections with groups outside of the current hate crime consortium, including but not limited to Black-led abolitionist movements, Palestine solidarity groups, community-led homelessness advocacy, trade and renters unions, queer migrant solidarity and prisoner support.

 

I sketch out the above even though it seems almost reformist as these services are actually trusted by a sizeable proportion of migrant communities, especially elders who aren’t confident using English. Since it’s impracticable to argue against the existence of such services, we can instead challenge their funding, messaging, and coalitional potential. Our situation differs from that of the so-called US, where the liberal hate crime nonprofits provide no social good whatsoever: they purely exist to propagandise for the police. We have to discern the roles that various groups serve in our communities and drive home how their continued participation in “hate crime prevention” fails to fulfil that need. This happens alongside developing our own abolitionist theory and organising, understanding it must be contextualised as building towards a globalised insurrectionary movement.

 

The representasian narrative remains so popular exactly because the messaging is simple and self-serving, but it isn’t insurmountable. Indeed, their narrative of racial self-interest, bourgeois aspiration, and failed-assimilation-as-abject-victimhood has has stabilised over the past few years. We know their tricks. We know they’re wrong, and we know they’re scared. They don’t have any new ideas. We want the whole world free, and we have to make that knowledge completely irresistible.

 

[1] Yasmin Tayag, ‘What I Gained From Self-Defense Class in the Wake of Anti-Asian Attacks’. New York Times, 9 June 2021. [https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/09/well/Asian-women-self-defense-training.html]

[2] Wufei Yu, ‘The West’s Asian Americans arm up for self-defense’. High Country News, 20 May 2021. [https://www.hcn.org/issues/53-6/south-guns-the-wests-asian-americans-arm-up-for-self-defense/]

[3] Natasha Ishak, ‘The True Stories Behind The ‘Rooftop Koreans’ Who Took Up Arms During The L.A. Uprising’. All That’s Interesting, 5 November 2020.

[https://allthatsinteresting.com/roof-koreans]

[4]theyellowwhistle, ‘So glad to see justice served […]’, Instagram, 30 November 2022. [https://www.instagram.com/p/ClmDicTps2b/]

[5] Esther Wang. ‘How to Hit Back: the desperate, confused, righteous campaign to stop Asian hate.’ NY Mag, 26 September 2022.

[https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/stop-asian-hate-crimes-politics.html]

[6] https://stopaapihate.org/2024/07/25/statement-stop-aapi-hate-responds-to-the-murder-of-sonya-massey/

[7] Dylan Rodríguez, ‘The “Asian exception” and the Scramble for Legibility: Toward an Abolitionist Approach to Anti-Asian Violence’. Society and Space, 8 April 2021. [https://www.societyandspace.org/articles/the-asian-exception-and-the-scramble-for-legibility-toward-an-abolitionist-approach-to-anti-asian-violence]

[8] ibid., Robert Sirvent, ‘Cops, Colleges, and Counterinsurgency: An Interview with Dylan Rodriguez.’  Black Agenda Report, 13 Sep 2023. [https://www.blackagendareport.com/cops-colleges-and-counterinsurgency-interview-dylan-rodriguez]

[9] yellow_peril_tactical, ‘Today it’s confirmed that the November […]’, Instagram, 13 March 2024 [https://www.instagram.com/p/C4eBWkvO-kG/]

[10] Ignatius, ‘An Anarchist Anti-Gun Manifesto’, Anarchist Library, May 2023. [https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anonymous-an-anarchist-anti-gun-manifesto]

[11] Remember & Resist, ‘Content warnings for posts and caption: sexual violence, harassment/bullying, abuse …’, Instagram, 23 June 2021. [https://www.instagram.com/remember.resist/p/CQd43yPFMxq/?img_index=2]

[12] Solidarity Not Silence, CrowdJustice update, 3 August 2021.  [https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/solidaritynotsilence/]

[13] Remember & Resist, ‘Hate crime legislation can’t—and won’t—save us’, Shado Mag, 3 April 2021.

[https://shado-mag.com/opinion/hate-crime-legislation-cant-and-wont-save-us/]

[14] The Monitoring Group, ‘A statement from The Monitoring Group (30/11/21)’, 30 November 2021

[15] Abolitionist Futures, ‘Addressing Gender-Based Violence’. [https://abolitionistfutures.com/gender-based-violence]

[16] Jun Pang, ‘Don’t call the Essex 39 a ‘tragedy’’, New Internationalist, 25 October 2019. [https://newint.org/features/2019/10/25/dont-call-essex-39-tragedy]

[17] Museum of Homelessness, ‘New research shows 1474 homeless people died in 2023 – a mounting national crisis revealed.’

[https://museumofhomelessness.org/news/new-research-shows-1474-homeless-people-died-in-2023-a-mounting-national-crisis-revealed]

[18] Rosalyn Romero and Momo Chang, ‘Since Stop AAPI Hate, some Oakland Chinatown residents are rethinking crime prevention’, The Oaklandside, 12 September 2024. [https://oaklandside.org/2024/09/12/oakland-chinatown-stop-aapi-hate-crime-public-safety/]

Muntjac Issue 1 – Community Self-Defense Against Fascism & The State

Posted on 13/12/2024 - 09/01/2025 by muntjac

After much delay, we are happy to announce issue 1 of our magazine is finally avalible!

Due to us being too broke to afford large format printing and there being so much text a singular zine would be too complex to bind we’ve done a pair of zines. The cover for the first is clippings from the 60s, 70s & 80s and the cover for the 2nd are from an uprising of South Asians against the police in Harehills, 2001.

Its avalible to download for free here muntjacmag.noblogs.org/mag/ and we them some for sale on our shop ko-fi.com/muntjacmag there are a few spots who’ve already asked to stock the magazine but if you want a bunch of copies please get in touch, we can’t produce huge quanities of the zine oursleves as we only have cheap non-commerical printers. So you’d like bulk copies (20+) get in touch and we’ll pass your message on to our distributor, Seditionist Distribution.

If you’d like to support us in the long run, consider subscribing;

There are three tiers, the first is just to send us a random amount of money (starting at £1) each month and in return you’ll have our eternal thanks. The second is you send us slightly more money (starting at £2.50) and in return you get each issue of the magazine as it comes out. The third is set at a slightly higher rate if you really adore us and have the cash to spend (starting at £8) then you’ll not only get the magazine but also any posters, flyers or other merch we make!  [these rates are the same no matter what country you want things shipped to, with the UK subscribers subsidizing everyone else]

We will try our best to be as transparent as possible with the moneys we are gifted, a long term goal of ours is to eventually pay our authors, but that would require one hell of a lot of subscribers.

Wether or not we get paid, we will strive to keep this project going, even if we have to transfer ownership to another group of people.

Huge thanks to the writers who sent texts in but also to Clash! Collective,  In The Belly and the many people who wouldn’t want us to put their names on a thank-you post for helping make this happen. We’ll be back in the spring! Keep in touch.

Muntjac Magazine.

 

A Quick Summary;

“On the forgotten so called race riot” – Sunwo speaks on the 1958 Nottingham pogroms and the resistance against it.

Micelio speaks on the union and the revolutionary potential that worker-led, independent communal unions hold

Marion Koshy writes about their entry and experience in the Houston Socialist Rifle Association, and what we collectively can learn from the SRA.

Simoun Magsalin charts a postcolonial anarchism that practices decoloniality without appropriating from indigenous peoples in the Philippines.

A Harrow Antifascist recounts Asian and Black community defence during the UK August race pogroms

Zhachev calls for a rejection of any attempt to demonise or ostracise militant radicals

p.n writes about their experience in a creative residency and the importance of artists being principled (and fiercely anti-zionist).

Ektin Ekdo asks an important question; are we fighting to be part of british society or to destroy it?

naga discusses the reactionary strains of politics that undergird community self-defence around the identities of East and South East Asians in Britain

Sunwo writes against black britishness as an identity, rather searching for a borderless revolutionary blackness.

poet of da soil writes a poem political manifesto on fourth worldism in britain.

In The Belly Zine – Free Polo!

Posted on 12/12/2024 by muntjac

We are sharing this post and appeal from our comrades at In The Belly [bellyzine.net]  A revolutionary abolitionist publication by and for incarcerated people and their communities.

Comrade Pierre “Polo” Pinson was wrongly convicted and sentenced in 1999 to 50 to 150 years for an armed assault on a Pittsburg Police Station and unrelated robberies and is seeking to vacate his illegal sentence

we are mobilizing to raise $5,000 to help retrain Corrie Woods, Esq. on Polo’s behalf. We appreciatre your support in helping us bring him home.

https://opencollective.com/free-polo

Anarchist Yeondae – 12.03 Our position on the civil war

Posted on 12/12/2024 - 12/12/2024 by muntjac

https://m.blog.naver.com/PostView.naver?blogId=anarchistleague&logNo=223682568029

A post by the Korean Anarchist Organisation 아나키스트 연대 on the shortlived martial law earlier this month and the collaboration between trade unions and liberal politicans which had a dampening effect on the general strike called in response to it.

The night of December 3rd was noisy. I thought that the invocation of martial law was a concept that only appeared in history books and had not been experienced since the 5th Republic. I thought that if the next martial law occurred, it would only occur when something very serious and urgent happened to the system.

But it seems that Mr. President wanted to commit suicide. The only troops mobilized were some defense force troops and a small number of airborne troops, and even that did not prevent the National Assembly from passing a resolution to lift martial law. Neither the representative of the ruling party nor the mayor of Seoul, who was from the ruling party, knew that martial law had been declared. The martial law troops had to return home lonely on police buses.

This could be seen as a great civic victory. But at the same time, it appears to be a defeat for the working class movement.

After martial law was declared, the very small number of mobilized martial law soldiers attempted to make emergency arrests, not Yang Kyung-soo, chairman of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, or the chairman of the Public Transport Workers’ Union, which is going on strike starting tomorrow. They tried to arrest Lee Jae-myeong, Han Dong-hoon, and Woo Won-sik. What does this mean? This may have been because, in the eyes of the President, the labor union would not pose any threat to the system nor would it cause any hindrance in any way. No matter how much a general strike is declared, there is no response on the ground, and the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions’ general strike is It is being relegated to a weekend rally, and the workers who came out for the general strike are incited with slogans that are essentially the same as those of the Democratic Party, and in a way, it seems natural.

Let’s be a little ashamed of this. Let’s go back to the field and organize a new struggle again. Let’s organize the field and politicize the field. So that the workers’ struggle can really shake up the system, so that the coming martial law can be truly severe. So that they can be more afraid of our leadership rather than Lee Jae-myung and Han Dong-hoon.

Posts navigation

Older posts
Newer posts

"Anarchists know that a long period of education must precede any great fundamental change in society, hence they do not believe in vote-begging, nor political campaigns, but rather in the development of self-thinking individuals."

Lucy Parsons - The Principles Of Anarchism, 1905

Contact us
fawnarchy@grrlz.net
(We now have PGP too)

Social media
We hate it, but we're on most of them here: linktr.ee/muntjac

Newsletter (Via Email)
We won't spam you, just updates on the project, new publications and the magazine itself. (you will need to make a lists.riseup account)
lists.riseup.net/www/info/muntjac

Distro
Subscribe / Buy Stuff / Donate
ko-fi.com/muntjacmag

Send Us Stuff!
We adore books, zines, love letters, posters, and sweet treats.
Please contact us first though as we would need to send someone to check the P.O. Box ...

Muntjac Collective
C/O Freedom Press
84b Whitechapel High St
E1 7QX
London
UK

Protect Yourself
Operational Security, Personal Security and Online Privacy.
anarsec.guide
notrace.how

Stay Informed
Check out a counter-info site for the news, reports and discourses you won't see on socials:
actforfree.noblogs.org
unoffensiveanimal.is
unravel.noblogs.org
sansnom.noblogs.org
switchoff.noblogs.org
radar.squat.net/en

Police Monitoring
Copwatch Network
linktr.ee/copwatchnetwork
NetPol
solidarity.netpol.org

Stop Deportations
Find Your Local AntiRaids Network
antiraids.net/local-groups

Prisoner Solidarity
Anti-repression work is everyones responsibility, learn about political prisoners, send letters and money to imprisoned anarchists and anti-colonial fighters.
bristolabc.org
brightonabc.org.uk
iwoc.iww.org.uk
palestineaction.org/prisoners
nycabc.wordpress.com
prisonersolidarity.com
june11.noblogs.org
solidarity.international

All our publications are free for prisoners.

  • May 2025
  • April 2025
  • March 2025
  • February 2025
  • January 2025
  • December 2024
  • November 2024
  • October 2024
  • September 2024
Proudly powered by WordPress | Theme: micro, developed by DevriX.