Nobody really took me seriously the past 2 years when I was literally screaming on my socials about how fucking bad this fest is, and FINALLY a local antifascist watch group reached out to me directly for more info.
Won't name them here for search reasons, but if you're in IL and are curious DM me and I'll happily spill the tea.
Posting in music cause its a black metal fest (go figure) with some p well known bands. Mostly im just happy to be validated rn and have someone taking me seriously when I go off about it.
Good. More fash needs to be outed. Stalin plz come back and purge the metal scenes.
Excellent work!
For anyone who reads this post, if you encounter a situation like this and you don't have connections to your local antifascist orgs I would strongly recommend getting in contact with a group like Unicorn Riot.
Keep it brief and just say something like:
"There's a metal fest in IL which is run by fascists and I have proof/I have evidence to support my suspicions. Is this something that you folks would be interested in taking a look at? Otherwise do you know of any local antifascist groups in IL that I can reach out to about this?"
They might take a little while to get back to you about this but they are likely communicating through their networks to see what should be done about it or to figure out the right org for the job.
It's always a good idea to coordinate antifascist action like this with local, national, and international antifascist orgs because they might be aware of the situation but they are still collecting important information and so they are intentionally holding off on going public about it.
Just as an example here, imagine that there's a big name metal band who Unicorn Riot has been tipped off about but there isn't anything to substantiate the tip with hard evidence yet. They hear that the metal fest in IL is run by fascists and there's rumours that this big name band is going to appear at the festival. So Unicorn Riot patiently waits to see if they sign up and they want to see them headline and take backstage photos with the fascist organisers and for the band's public-facing social media accounts to interact with the organisers so they can blow the lid off the whole thing, but only when they've tapped that source of info dry.
But then you get a nosy journalist looking to get their article on the front page of the local newspaper and they pick up the story, the negotiations between the big name band and the festival organisers are quitely abandoned by the band's manager because they don't want any bad press, and now instead of uncovering a potential network of bands which are crypto-fascists, instead the local newspaper sells a few more copies, the journalist gets a pat on the back, and meanwhile all the fascists go to ground and nothing of value is achieved.
Not saying that you're wrong for what you did at all - if only everyone cared about this as much as you do then organisations like Unicorn Riot wouldn't need to exist in the first place. Just giving you/others a heads-up on how to be more strategic about your antifascist activism.
I mean, personally I would rather have the festival shut down before there's any opportunity to popularize it by linking it with a big name band. Just outing folks as fash isn't a deal killer for people anymore, best to deplatform them before they can bring others in.
Fair enough.
I was just doing a sort of thought experiment here to explain why it's important to coordinate with antifascist orgs to avoid jumping the gun and interrupting activities to surveil and identify fascists but it was more of a thought experiment (speaking in vague terms to avoid doxing myself or revealing too much internal info from this point onwards...) based on a somewhat recent situation in my area where a local anti-fascist org was uncovering a fascist network and a journalist got wind of what was going on and did an expose before enough info could be collected on people in the network, which naturally causes people to respond by locking down or deleting accounts and groups, purging friends lists and anyone who is not part of a trusted inner circle, and potentially deleting incriminating info before it could be uncovered and documented etc.
It's a question of tactics vs. strategy; sure it's better that fascists don't have a platform at all but if you are constantly hounding them then they will retreat to spaces which are increasingly more private and difficult to infiltrate and you teach them to become exquisitely conscious of OpSec to the point that they no longer post incriminating info, everyone is hidden behind personas, all communication is done in coded language, and it becomes virtually impossible to infiltrate and surveil them because they only accept people who they personally know into their closed groups.
This is why I tell Banderites on social media to "Get Stashynskyied"; it's a reference to Bohdan Stashynsky's assassination of Bandera using cyanide.
Am I saying "Get mad, Banderite" by rubbing their face in his assassination?
Am I saying "People want you dead"?
Am I personally making a threat against their life because they are a Banderite?Who knows? All I know is that it's unlikely to warrant attention from the three letter agencies and even if it did catch their attention it's nothing that is actionable so I'm extremely unlikely to get arrested for it and even if that did happen, a judge isn't going to entertain charges unless it's a kangaroo court.
The same can be said about creative use of phrases like "You will be appointed to the role of chief masonry inspector after the revolution" or "When our turn comes" (in reference to the Marx quote) or "You deserve a tour of the Barbara Pit" or "You will be made into a mural"; none of these things are readily searchable for people who are doing dragnet surveillance by skimming and Ctrl+Fing for keywords, none of these things are credible threats that will hold up or give cause for surveillance on their own, all of them have plausible deniability. (Btw I use these terms to bully the far right out of spaces when they are making threats against people, I'm not just doing it wantonly.)
So if fascists start doing this sort of thing and their presence on the internet is veiled in coded language, extremely tight security processes, and having OpSec at the forefront of their mind at all times then it relegates the surveillance and infiltration of their online spaces almost exclusively to the feds and, famously, the feds are extremely slow to act if they take any action at all. Those fuckers would rather let domestic terror events happen so they can pass stricter laws (to enforce against the radical left) and to justify demands for increased budgets, scope, and access to equipment for enforcement than to do anything proactive.
Unfortunately it's necessary to do a certain degree of working with the pigs in order to deal with major threats but you basically have to force them into action by telling them that if they do nothing and this evidence gets leaked to the media, including the fact that the pigs were contacted and warned that a serious "event" was being planned, but they chose not to do anything about it then there's going to be a massive scandal in the news. But this only works when there is a credible and operationalised threat in plain language. The minute that fascists stop referring to the event using explicit wording and start talking about it as carrying out a "Night of the Long Noses" then the cops will become completely indifferent and it gives them plausible deniability to hide their inaction behind.
Even for lower level anti-fascist activities like covering up their graff and seeing where they go on stickering runs, having heavies on standby to defend community events which they are planning to cause trouble at, and giving a heads-up to community members who are being targeted for harassment or stalking campaigns... all of this become virtually impossible if they go to ground. And the pigs are almost entirely indifferent to any sort of proactive measures; "Call us after you have been assaulted and we'll type up a report about it", "If you have no proof of who sabotaged your car or attacked your home then there's nothing we can do about it", "I'm sorry but we do not have the resources to post officers to protect the event unless you can provide us evidence that a credible threat to public safety exists"...
Basically everything that I've mentioned here applies either directly or in a roundabout way to how you should operate in your own activist spaces online, and probably in your general online presence, in order to mitigate leaks, infiltration, attracting attention, and the chance of people building a dossier on you btw.
With all due respect, comrade, what you're espousing sounds an awful lot like the lib claim that "sunlight is the best disinfectant." Which very much has not worked out well for things. I WANT the fash hiding in the shadows where it's harder for them to recruit. I WANT them to be terrified that at any moment that if they're discovered their life will be ruined. Because that means there's less of them, they are not the norm. Letting fash build up their numbers with the hope that eventually pigs will do the right thing does not sound like a sound strategy to me.
I am very familiar with opsec, but thanks for the tips.
Hey, I remember when you first posted about this! Glad your screaming paid off.
