The anti-fascist militia Arditi del Popolo (AdP), was founded in Rome in late June 1921. Faced with a growing threat of armed fascist gangs, regular people gathered around the AdP defense organization and managed to keep streets of cities and neighborhoods safe from the domestic terror squads known as “blackshirts”. Its first action was July 19 in the port city of Piombino, in Tuscany, Italy.

Sung to the tune of Giovinezza (fascist party hymn):

We beat back the violence
of mercenary fascism
all to arms, on the calvary
of human redemption.

This eternal youth
renews itself in faith
for a people who demand
equality and liberty.

Two days after Piombino, at Sarzana, a column of five hundred fascists marched to free their captured leader Renato Ricci. A dozen Carabinieri fired on the right wing extremists approaching the railway station, and AdP fighters joined by local workers and citizens hunted the survivors on the run through the countryside. The chief of staff of the defeated right-wing terror squad reflected:

The squad, so long accustomed to meeting an enemy who nearly always ran away, or offered feeble resistance, could not, and did not know how to defend themselves.

Food for thought.

Michael Rosen reads his poem Don’t Mention the Children

Related: Genocide Hidden in Arkansas’ Cadron Settlement on Trail of Tears

Thirty of the list’s 50 victims were children, hardly any with listed identities. The inscription explains that “before 1850, it was common for Cherokee children to be unnamed…”

No Fear, by Danger Dan

Adaptation:

There’s two options now and both of them bring stress
One begins tomorrow, one begins right now, no less
We can wait around while they gather up their weight
In parliaments and in the streets — then fight them, but too late

‘Cause we wait and wait and wait, sure, it’s easier to stall
It still comes for the throat, just later, that is all
The other option’s trouble, and it lands on you today
With the cops and the especially-German types in play

But a slim little chance to turn the page back round
Or maybe stop the worst before it settles down
You don’t know what to do, don’t know where to begin
Hear me out — I might just have the angle you can win

No fear, no fear, no fear, no fear
No fear, no fear, no fear, no fear

Call up one or two you trust to have your back
People you can lean on, set a meeting, make a pact
You start a little group and the group has got no name
No founding date, no charter, no club, none of that game

Talk to bars and pubs, ask them for a night
For a space to throw a party where the anti-fascists unite
Invite up all your friends, a little festival
DIY, the entry’s free, just a donation, that is all

With the cash you pull together, buy some cans to spray
Buy your markers and your stickers, make it plain as day
You’re done with all the fascists, and this city is your own
Watch for every camera, don’t get caught, don’t get known

Never without gloves, not a fingerprint to trace
Never shoot a video, never photograph the place
Only tell the ones who stood there when it went down
It’s left-wing street work, not a shot at renown

You’ll need rules for the way that you all communicate
Not just for the Nazis and the ilk that’s at your gate
The services will take an interest fast
So keep it all in secret from the first day to the last

That means no DMs, no messengers, no mail
Anything that’s dicey, keep it face to face, don’t fail
Leave the phone at home — it maps out where you’ve been
And if they ever nab you: not a word, hold it in

No fear, no fear, no fear, no fear
No fear, no fear, no fear, no fear

It’ll shock you that the core of any given crew
When you look inside, it’s mostly only just a few
A handful is enough, that’s usually the deal
To build the local antifa on the ground and keep it real

Next you research every right-wing scene in reach
Shoot their meets and marches secret, quiet, out of speech
Learn just who they are, what they do, and where they stay
Where they work and all the company they keep along the way

Build your fake accounts on Telegram, TikTok
Log down all they write and every word they talk
Grab their paper trash, and tail them where they roam
To the bars, the meeting spots, the flat they call a home

Sign up on the dating sites, sign up on them all
Somehow, someday, every Nazi’s gonna take the call
Get bold and delinquent, get precise and inventive
Feed that antifa archive, keep it comprehensive

Fascists live walled off, in a delusional haze
Arguments won’t reach them, that ship has sailed these days
But experience has shown that there’s a thing or two that gives
Once you get in touch with everyone their circle lives

Back in the day this tactic went by “outing” for a name
Flyers up and posters where they live, to stake the claim
With the photos and the roles, with the names and where they stay
Nobody wants a Nazi pig two doors away

And you seal that with a couple friendly phone calls too
To advise the schools, the unis, the employers who
You wish them a good day, all polite, and then you ask
“Now how’s that fit the ethos of your firm?” — and there’s your task

Help your local paper out, hand them what you know
If they haven’t caught on yet and got it on their own
That there’s a Nazi problem creeping through the town
Might just wake the DA up to run the charges down

With a bit of luck they get some mail or do some time
But you’d be a fool to trust the German state to draw the line
‘Cause experience has shown you it’s the other way instead:
There are far too many fascists where the badges get their bread

No fear, no fear, no fear, no fear
No fear, no fear, no fear, no fear

You’d almost think the services we count on for defense
Don’t fight the right-wing structures — no, they prop them up, no sense
There’s many a cop who’s on the AfD ballot for a seat
And Uniter has got KSK’s munition on the street

So that means: while you research, running down the leads
You’ve got to run your own security, tend to your own needs
The Nazis run their politics on fear, that’s how they steer
On hate and raw militance and terror year on year

There’s plenty you can pin on them, but this you can’t dismiss:
They told us what they’ll do to us — nobody’s blind to this
And history has shown us all before, and shown it plain:
Do nothing, hold your tongue, and it comes back worse again

No fear, so take the whole thing up in your own hand
They look dangerous, but we can lay them out where they stand
Coordinate together, start to train and drill
If you fight it as a unit, then it can work — it will

Right there on the first day, when you throw the party wide
There’s a chance it all kicks off with trouble just outside
So plan for the confrontation, plan for it in full
Have your surprises ready packed for when they come to pull

Legally we’re scraping at the gray zone once again
There’s an elephant, I’ll leave him in the room right where he’s been
It’s clear enough what’s to be done, no more from me, I’m through
Love and greetings out to Lina, Gucci, Maja and Nanuk

No fear, no fear, no fear, no fear (to end)

There is never symmetry. Fascism is by definition an asymmetric threat, meant to eliminate all other voices. The more antifascism you produce, the more diversity of opinion results. A direct result.

The German Grundgesetz codifies this asymmetry: Art. 21(2) party bans, Art. 79(3) unamendable core. Streitbare Demokratie is the admission that pluralism requires enforcement, which means elimination of fascism.

Property is not valuable such that it should interfere with the value of antifascism. This is especially true because fascism brings widespread property destruction. One night, one order, in November 1938 smashed thousands of business, burned down hundreds of buildings, and then billed the victims for their own loss. The war that followed leveled the cities of Europe. The antifascist spray can defends far more property than it marks, an act of value preservation that is as ordinary as the “Kein Eintritt” sign bolted to every factory wall. And it comes off.

Gumbel counted 354 political murders from the right against 22 from the left, 1919 to 1922, and the fact that sentencing was inverted. The German center tolerated the people who acted to eliminate the center, imprisoning the people who defended the center. 1933 followed straight into Dachau and 16,000 executions by guillotine, leaving no center at all, only Nazis who could “stay alive” by their own design.

The live question of this poem is not whether asymmetry is real, it is of course always real by the very definition of Nazism. The question is whether the subsidiarity condition has been met, whether Abhilfe through the institutions is still available.

Danger Dan answers no.

Research by taz has documented connections between active and former KSK soldiers and the far-right networks Nordkreuz and Uniter, and the Militärischer Abschirmdienst reported a higher density of far-right suspect cases inside the KSK than in the rest of the Bundeswehr. In spring 2020 the KSK commander, Brigadegeneral Markus Kreitmayr, ran an “amnesty” collection that let soldiers drop illegally hoarded munitions into boxes, free of consequences and without the ministry’s knowledge. Tens of thousands of rounds and even hand grenades came back, significantly more than the books had listed as missing. That summer the Bundeswehr disclosed roughly 48,000 rounds and 62 kilograms of explosives unaccounted for, and the defense ministry dissolved the KSK’s second company outright.

The state bean counters said one thing. The collected ammo boxes said another.

And yet the Dresden and Budapest verdicts show the German state still claims they have a monopoly on violence, enforced in one political direction to enable the asymmetry of Nazism.

Germany broke its own constitution to deliver Maja T. to Orban’s corrupted courts overnight, a handover the Bundesverfassungsgericht ruled unlawful. Budapest ruled eight years while Orban demanded more. This repeats the inverted enforcement that Gumbel measured, the judicial bias that allows Nazism to exist, because it erases Abhilfe exactly as the song says.