The Original Antifa was a militant anti-fascist organisation in the Weimar Republic started by members of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) that existed from 1932 to 1933. It was primarily active as a KPD campaign during the 1932 German federal elections and was described by the KPD as a "red united front under the leadership of the only anti-fascist party, the KPD"

Many people recognized the threat of fascism and called for such a united front. But both the SPD and KPD refused. Instead, they created pseudo-united groups—among themselves. The SPD had the Eiserne Front (“Iron Front”), composed of SPD-led labor unions and some liberals. They depended, ultimately, on the bourgeois police to fight the Nazis.

This fractured politics persisted until 30 January 1933, when the German elites transferred power to Hitler. After that, the greatest workers movement in the world was crushed by the SA and the police. Unions were banned, along with both the KPD and the SPD, with hardly a shot fired.

After the war, Antifas varied in size and composition across the former Reich, now divided into four zones of occupation, and developed in interaction with the local occupying power. Emerging seemingly overnight in dozens of cities, most formed immediately after Allied forces arrived, while some such as the group in Wuppertal “liberated” themselves in street battles with Hitler loyalists before the Allies could.

Pivotally, these circles were not spontaneous instances of solidarization between traumatized war survivors, but the product of Social Democratic Party (SPD) and Communist Party (KPD) veterans reactivating prewar networks. Albrecht Lein reports that the core of the Braunschweig Antifa was made up of KPD and SPD members in their forties and fifties who had avoided the front, though Catholic workers’ organizations and other forces were also involved.

Antifas tended to focus on a combination of hunting down Nazi criminals and underground Nazi partisans (the so-called “Werewolves”) and practical concerns affecting the general population. Braunschweig’s Antifa, for example, printed a twelve-point program demanding, among other things, the removal of Nazis from all administrative bodies and their immediate replacement with “competent antifascists,” liquidation of Nazi assets to provide for war victims, emergency laws to prosecute local fascists, and the reestablishment of the public health-care service.

Yet the Antifa of today is not a product of a political victory from which we can draw our own strength, but of defeat — socialism’s defeat at the hands of Nazism.

The Antifas in Stuttgart, Braunschweig, and elsewhere faced impossible odds, but still sought to articulate a series of political demands and a practical organizational vision for the radicalizing workers willing to listen. Antifas refused to capitulate to their seemingly hopeless predicament and dared to dream big.

-- The Lost History of Antifa :gold-antifa:

-- The Origins of Antifa :af:

-- The Philosophy of Antifa | Philosophy Tube :af-heart:


Hola Camaradas :fidel-salute-big: , Our Comrades In Texas are currently passing Through some Hard times :amerikkka: so if you had some Leftover Change or are a bourgeoisie Class Traitor here are some Mutual Aid programs that you could donate to :left-unity-3:

Here is a list of Trans rights organizations you can support :cat-trans:

Here are some resourses on Prison Abolition :brick-police:

Alexander, M - ‘The New Jim Crow’ (2010)

Davis, A - ‘Are Prisons Obsolete’ (2003)

Jackson, G. - ‘Blood in My Eye’ (1972)

Vitale A.S - ‘The End of Policing’ (2017)

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/angela-y-davis-are-prisons-obsolete :angela:

Foundations of Leninism :flag-su:

:lenin-shining: :unity: :kropotkin-shining:

Anarchism and Other Essays :ancom:

Remember, sort by new you :LIB:

Yesterday’s megathread :sad-boi:

Follow the Hexbear twitter account :comrade-birdie:

THEORY; it’s good for what ails you (all kinds of tendencies inside!) :RIchard-D-Wolff:

COMMUNITY CALENDAR - AN EXPERIMENT IN PROMOTING USER ORGANIZING EFFORTS :af:

Join the fresh and beautiful batch of new comms:

!genzedong@hexbear.net :deng-salute:

!strugglesession@hexbear.net :why-post-this:

!libre@hexbear.net :anarxi:

!neurodiverse@hexbear.net :Care-Comrade:

  • jmichigan_frog [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Everyone more radical than me: utopian adventurist ultraleftist larper (liberal)

    Everyone less radical than me: social chauvinist revisionist opportunist shill (liberal)

    Me: VERY liberal