We present issue 70 of Organise! with an anti-fascist theme. This includes an analysis of the problem faced by anarchists aiming to fight fascism without falling into the trap of alliance with broad-based leftist and ‘democratic’ oppositions, followed by one on Antifa, the anarchist alternative to such alliances. Our approach to anti-fascism is important, not least because of the need to prevent the BNP’s plan to hold their Red, White and Blue festival in Nottinghamshire again this summer, in spite of welcome splits locally and nationally. To give an international perspective on the problem, we also include an article about the rise of ultranationalism in Bulgaria written by a Bulgarian member of AF. As a counterpoint to these worrying developments, four decades having passed since the heady days of rebellion in 1968 (see article on Paris '68 in this issue), the International of Anarchist Federations can only be relieved to be celebrating its own 40th year anniversary with news of meaningful dialogue between contemporary Bulgarian anarchists and Turkish autonomous groups.
Our ongoing series of articles about anarchist influences on art and culture covers Russian Constructivism in the 1920’s when anarchists expropriated Moscow mansions of the rich and turned them into ‘circles of proletarian art-printing, poetry and theatre’. Without wishing to encourage the conspiracy theorists, whilst at the same time living in a present day reality of state-sponsored torture and rendition flights, we also attempt to get to the bottom of governmental obsessions with psychological control such as CIA brainwashing and ‘reprogrammming’ experiments.
A broad mix of reviews cover pamphlets on The Ranters and Kett’s Rebellion, a book of ‘three line novels’ by turn-of-the-last-century anarchist Félix Fénéon and Beer and Revolution about the German anarchist movement in New York City in the same period. We also have reviews of Where Vultures Feast about the environmental and human devastation wreaked by Shell in Nigeria, and the new look Black Flag magazine.
Last but not least, we review the excellent Eastern European & ex-Soviet bloc magazine Abolishing the Borders from Below, whose Berlin-based editors we were very pleased to meet at London’s anarchist bookfair last October. In turn, this summer, after running stalls at the New York City bookfair last year and most recently this March in Dublin, the AF has taken Organise! and our other publications from West to East, notably to the Zagreb anarchist bookfair in Croatia. This a very challenging time for anarchist organisations as we continue to bridge the international divides created by the World Wars and Cold War in the hope that the modern-day tide of nationalism can be resisted. To succeed we will need to work hard to relay an internationalist perspective amongst the working class at home, so that they are not convinced by the continual anti-immigrant rhetoric of both ultranationalist and so-called democratic governments.