(en) Australia, Anarchist Affinity - The Platform #2 - Interview with Kojo Barbah from South London Anti-Fascists and the Anti-Raids Network by Guest Author

Kojo Barbah is a London based activist and a founding member of South London 
Anti-Fascists. He is also a member of the direct action migrant solidarity organisation 
the Anti-Raids Network. ---- Maybe we can begin by discussing the origins of South London 
Anti-Fascists (SLAF). Though London is a city with a long, continuous and quite notorious 
history of anti-fascist organising, SLAF only came to my attention last year, in the wake 
of the murder of British soldier Lee Rigby in Woolwich on May 22nd. How and when did the 
group come together? Was the decision to reactivate the group out of mere necessity, in 
response to far-right attempts to capitalise on Rigby's death, or were there other 
factors? ---- South London Anti-Fascists were originally formed by trade unionists in 
2008, namely Battersea and Wandsworth Trade Union Council and Croydon Trade Union Council. 
It was in reaction to the London Mayor and Assembly elections, which returned the highest 
proportional vote for the fascist British National Party (5%) in London and guaranteed 
them a seat in the Assembly. The vote, though overall still small, was acutely 
concentrated in Barking and Dagenham, poor deindustrialised North East London suburbs 
where the BNP were made the official local council opposition with 12 elected councillors. 
In South London, Morden was also a flashpoint for far-right activity. In 2009, the BNP's 
membership was leaked and though some people on it were never fully paid up fascists there 
was a sizeable number in this area, including a small scaffolding business run by a 
fascist which still operates today. Our view was that the far right were gaining ground in 
traditional working class areas and the privatisation agenda pursued by Labour had 
abandoned and alienated working class interests. We were lucky to have a paid organiser to 
support our efforts. The far-right needed to be tackled using a diversity of tactics and 
the divided efforts of Unite Against Fascism (UAF) (predominantly SWP) and 
Searchlight/Hope Not Hate (HNH) were clearly not working.

Antifa at this time was at a low point as the BNP had moved away (though never completely 
abandoned) from street confrontation to wearing suits and appearing like professional 
politicians. Also, there were stories of Antifa attempting to blow up cars belonging to 
the wrong people and getting sent down for it. SLAF worked initially as a collective where 
HNH, UAF and autonomous antifascists could work together to organise against local threats 
and support individuals and communities who were targeted or concerned about local 
activity. We dwindled in activity as the threat of the BNP receded after 2010. The EDL 
emerged as a new threat and the UK Independence Party, though marginal, were in the 
background. I was the chair and my political orientation was changing too. I moved from a 
democratic socialist orientation to a more social anarchist position. During our down 
period, I read a lot more!

Lee Rigby's death definitely prompted a reactivation. I personally got a lot of calls 
asking what should be organised as the then leader of the EDL, Tommy Robinson, was coming 
to Woolwich. We were disorganised and too small in number to respond so initially we had 
to watch him on TV unopposed. A meeting was called by a prominent local anarchist a day 
later and I suggested using the SLAF banner as it happened in our patch. We made a callout 
to confront the EDL outside Downing Street and have started to hold regular meetings ever 
since.

Organised antifascists like Anti-Fascist Action (1985-1990's) and the contemporary 
Anti-Fascist Network have stressed, alongside the necessity of counter mobilisation and 
confrontation on the streets, the importance of 'filling the political vacuum'. This type 
of counter analysis generally consists of a class-struggle critique of capitalism, but 
often extends to critiques of the state, political liberalism and nationalism. SLAF seems 
to take this responsibility very seriously, and argues persuasively that struggles against 
all other forms of oppression (ubiquitous police harassment and violence inflicted upon 
communities of colour through policies like the Met Police's 'Stop and SEARCH'; the 
targeting of sex workers in Soho; 'raids' by the UK Border Force targeting migrant workers 
and asylum seekers to name but a few) are also antifascist activities. Can you elaborate 
on this connection?

There isn't unanimity in our group on this, we have Trotskyists and some who avoid 
political labels but this is the majority view.

Anti-fascism, bluntly, is stopping fascists from growing either in number or in confidence 
at the very least. At the maximum it is dismantling their capacity to be effective. 
Liberal antifascists believe antifascists are bad because they are illiberal and pay only 
lip service to parliamentary democracy. We oppose fascists because they seek our complete 
domination by exterminating working class power.

When we reformed, we wanted to express our beliefs about the nature of fascism and the 
state. Fascism is the ultimate expression of capitalism's need to control and subordinate 
human activity to its logic and authority. The state is its most effective tool. When 
societies are failed by capital, the preferred solution is state repression. However in 
liberal democracies, unlike military dictatorships, repression cannot be nakedly deployed, 
apologetics are utilised to explain the contradiction of affirming human rights and the 
exercising of sub-human treatment. The law is the crystallisation of this - the targeting 
of minorities, whether it is asylum seekers, cultural groups or sex workers is the State 
practicing and perfecting its power to oppress. The more we allow this to happen, the 
better the police get at wielding it, the more polished politicians are at arguing for 
dehumanisation, and the more efficient media outlets are in convincing the public. We 
oppose state repression because it is antithesis of our power, which is our solidarity. We 
want to bring together the full spectrum of our human expression against state oppression. 
Capital, through the state, wants to divide and categorise us into economic utilities and 
human resources.

Fascism is capitalism unrestrained by historical appeals to morality or universal rights. 
The popular appeal of this doesn't happen overnight, but is a culture that can take 
decades, or in times of crisis, a few years to develop and become entrenched. If we do not 
resist state oppression then we allow the tools of our destruction to sharpen and be ready 
to put into fascist control.

In an excellent piece published on the SLAF blog in May, you identify the predominance of 
'populist' anti-immigrant rhetoric in the run-up to the European elections as a reason 
'antifascism is necessary but insufficient', adding 'in our analysis, the state is a much 
bigger threat and generator of popular racism' (than UKIP, BNP etc). This is an 
observation with great relevance in the Australian context, where social justice campaigns 
often ignore structural issues, instead focusing on appeals to politicians, commentators 
and the state to be nicer, more compassionate and less racist. Given Australia's role as a 
global pioneer of mandatory detention of asylum seekers, and the fact that much of this 
infrastructure was built by the Australian Labor Party, this too seems insufficient. How 
does SLAF identify the role of the state in creating, exploiting and perpetuating racism? 
Any thoughts about organising outside of borders and against the
state?

Australia's legacy of white supremacy is an outpost of British imperialism. The policy of 
White Australia may have been publicly restrained by the British but it was tacitly 
endorsed and clearly financed. In managing a global empire, Britain has learned to be less 
explicit about its racial hierarchy but it is clearly a deeply embedded part of British 
culture.

We as a group have not theorised how the state has created racism, but the works of Walter 
Rodney, Theodore W. Allen and bell hooks would illuminate here. I believe that racism was 
an imperialist construct invented to justify enslavement, genocide and subjugation of 
darker skinned peoples and their cultures. It is necessary for imperial capitalist 
accumulation to continue and allay moral qualms about inhuman treatment. If they are not 
human, went the theory, then it was justified.

It also helped and still does help the ruling elite manage class relations. Nationalism 
and whiteness create a powerful collective identity that politicians use to generate a 
sense of pride and superiority amongst the white working class. Invoking whiteness, 
however subtly, signals that to be white is to be associated with being the dominator not 
the dominated, to be part of the history of Kings and Queens not the enslaved and 
impoverished, and that they are heirs to the pioneers of democracy and modernity and not 
savagery and barbarism. This is a myth of course, but it is said or inferred so often that 
it is widely believed. Even if racial myths based on biology have waned, they have 
transferred seamlessly into cultural myths. These ideas underlie why immigration controls 
are popular. They refer to the mortal danger that their biology or now culture may be 
irreparably damaged by the contamination of foreign bodies.

These myths aid class relations for the ruling class in another way, as they can form 
powerful associations to aid labour discipline. The welfare scrounger is the class 
equivalent of the asylum seeker. In other words, a pariah, a human to legitimately 
loathed. The stereotypical connotations of being Black, that is to be lazy, unable to 
organise your own affairs, scheming, preferring base pleasures to self-improvement and 
lacking a "decent" disposition provides a basis for reducing state social subsidy and 
weakening the power of organised labour. Racism and class hatred are interrelated, it is 
difficult to deploy one without making reference to the other. In breaking down these 
myths, we require socialisation, solidarity and struggle. Racial myths have been largely 
destroyed by the act of racialised people fighting to be recognised as human and white 
working class people living and working with racialised people and accepting that reality.

South London Anti-Fascists is part of the UK wide Anti-Fascist Network and the London 
based Anti Raids Network.



Anti-Fascist Network

http://www.antifascistnetwork.org

South London Anti-Fascists

http://www.slaf.org.uk

Anti Raids Network

https://network23.org/antiraids

London Black Revolutionaries

http://www.facebook.com/London-BlackRevs

Movement For Justice

http://www.movementforjustice.org

Unity Centre Glasgow

http://www.unitycentreglasgow.org
www.anarchistaffinity.org