Berkeley: Neo-Nazi posters taken down, replaced in under 24hours w/ Anti-Fascist message

Submitted to It’s Going Down

On Friday, May 6th, around 20 white nationalists, Neo-Nazis, and fascists associated with Identity Evropa (IE) and the National Policy Institute (NPI) held a rally at UC Berkeley with police police protection. IE and NPI are part of the growing “Alternative Right,” which includes academic “scientific racists,” pro-rape Men’s Rights Activists, proponents of the ‘Dark Enlightenment,’ and others opposed to ideals of egalitarianism, feminism, and working-class solidarity. These ideas have gained ground under Trump’s campaign and proponents have used it as a point of intervention. Ultimately, their aim is to create an all white fascist state on the North American continent along the lines of the Confederacy, based on these ideals of anti-egalitarianism and white supremacy.

In the following two weeks since the rally, posters from Identity Evropa have begun to be seen popping up around the UC Berkeley campus, both along the well trafficked streets of Shattuck, Allston, Euclid, and University Ave and in the neighborhoods around the campus. All of these posters were quickly ripped down, many of which were found and destroyed by individuals not associated with any group or crew, but who were opposed to the fascist and white supremacist views of IE. It seems that news of the white supremacists actions on campus has reached enough eyes and ears to bring several people in on the task of destroying the flyers. After an expose story on the May 6th rally was shared on facebook and twitter several thousand times, posts began to appear on Indybay showing ripped down and destroyed propaganda.

Seemingly in response to the destruction of their work, on twitter the person running the IE account, most likely Nathan Damigo, (view his facebook here), a Neo-Nazi youth organizer who currently lives in Northern California and was present at the recent UC Berkeley rally, have put up collections of pictures that seems to imply that they are only increasing their activity:

We went back to Berkeley to show the antidialogical actors that there is nothing they can do to halt us. #WeAreHere pic.twitter.com/MHO1cg6f0m

— IDENTITY EVROPA (@IdentityEvropa) May 22, 2016

These tweets are dated on May 22nd, at around 3:30 – 4 AM in the morning. They show posters in about 6 areas of Berkeley. There’s only one problem, when anti-fascists went out to find these posters, they found most had already been ripped down. As one post on Indybay.org read:

New Identity Evropa poster found in West Berkeley, pasted to a utility box on the corner of University Ave and Acton St. Glue was still wet on the back after taking down. Found around 3pm on 5-19-16.

Thanks to IE tweets and anti-fascists knowledge of the streets we live and work around, the two remaining IE posters were found and quickly destroyed.

Although most if not all of these posters have been quickly ripped down by members of the public almost as fast as they have gone up, we wanted to help further ferment a culture of resistance to fascism, patriarchy, and white supremacy. We strongly believe that there are both Berkeley residents and UC Berkeley students who are involved in these groups and are posting up these images. We also wanted to make sure that the student body and surrounding Berkeley community knows about this growing fascism and helps take a stand against it.

Towards this end, anti-fascists decided to put up 10 times the amount of posters IE put up along with hundreds of antifa stickers that read “Anti-Fascist Zone” as well as ones with photos of the Neo-Nazis and white nationalists who are known to be members of these organizations. We also passed out information and talked with people about what is happening in the local area to alert them to the threat of white nationalist organizing and how to get involved in fighting it.

We will not allow groups like IE to move into Berkeley and set up shop. As a collection of multi-racial and working-class people already are in the streets of this city everyday, we talk to and watch out for each other. We will not allow a crew of out of town Neo-Nazis and locally based students to promote their fascist views.

Such activity is both an extension of and a part of, a larger struggle against capital, white supremacy, patriarchy, and the State. From Ohlone people fighting for sacred sites and against continued colonization, to people taking action against a continued barrage of police murders, to working class people everywhere fighting back against a system making billions off of the housing crisis, austerity, and low paying jobs, the struggle here in Berkeley against the fascists and white supremacists of Identity Evropa is another facet in the broader fight for a society free from exploitation and class, gender, and racial hierarchies of domination.

These fascists are nowhere to be found in the everyday struggles of everyday working people, including those of poor and working whites. From the fight to get justice for Richard “Peddie” Perez, a young man in Richmond killed by the police, to the collection of mobile home residents next to Golden Gate Fields in El Cerrito who were displaced due to development, to the thousands of poor people that have been involved in various struggles from Occupy, Fight for $15, and Black Lives Matter. In all of these examples, poor and working-class whites have worked along side thousands of others, against the systems of domination and oppression in the face of white supremacy and patriarchy.

Fascism will not liberate anyone, even the poor and working class white people that white nationalists attempt to pander to. We must not only smash these fascists and drive them off the streets, but also out organize them and present clear alternatives to authoritarianism and nationalism.

Western civilization is breaking down and coming apart due to constant cycles of economic, ecological, political, and social crisis. Workers find themselves without being able to afford a place to live in the cities where we work, for seemingly more and more hours for less and less pay. Whole cities and towns are running out of water as infrastructure crumbles. A collusion of corporations and government covers up everything from nuclear disasters to mass gas leaks. Climate change threatens life on this planet for the sake of generating massive profits for a select few elites and keeps the wheels of the military, industry, and government running. The response from government is more prison, more policing, and more surveillance. White supremacy and patriarchy is part of the glue that holds these systems of oppression together.

White nationalism offers no solutions to these problems. Only a final one.

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