On Wednesday 7th August, Bristolians came together in their thousands to send the message that fascists are not welcome in our city and will be ran out of town should they try to come again.
After being soundly defeated by a well organised counter demonstration on Saturday (see our previous statement), a crowd that similarly represented the best of this city, numbering somewhere around 2,000-4,000 people, turned out to maintain our city as a fascist-free zone.
Communities threatened by racist violence turned out to deny their victimisation by fascists, the media, and political groups attempting to take ownership over what is grassroots self-organised defence. Shoulder to shoulder with thousands of similarly well organised local allies, Bristol stood firm and denied any opportunity for the fascists to even step foot in East Bristol, let alone assemble to do violence.
Fascist spotters and livestreamers (yes, we see you) who made occasional appearances on Old Market throughout the day, clearly relayed the message that our streets are not safe for their kind and they would be crushed wherever they tried to mobilise.
The antifascist crowd was adaptable, prepared for confrontation, and relatively cohesive despite misinformation being spread by well intentioned and malicious sources alike – we’d suggest checking out Red Flare’s (brilliant antifascist intelligence gatherers) social media output for advice on evaluating threats for future actions: @Redflareinfo / https://redflare.info/
A much smaller crowd had managed to defend our city on Saturday, and clearly many were spurred to action by witnessing the scenes.
We urge people to stay vigilant and, whilst we saw a resounding victory for love and community solidarity in the face of unimaginable hatred, the threat remains where politicians and media continue to fan the flames of division that the worst (and richest) of this country are happy to direct towards those marginalised by their rhetoric.
These fascists do not have ‘legitimate concerns’, and those who opposed them are not simply ‘just as violent’ ‘counter protestors’. We are one community made up of many wide ranging faiths, beliefs, races, sexualities, and genders that has made it clear that we are willing to defend ourselves and each other in a way that our fundamentally racist State institutions – especially uniformed fascists in police and immigration enforcement – will never do.
Another key message from Wednesday is this: that Bristol has been, is, and always will be antifascist. Our communities are organised, diverse, and quick to act. Other places in the UK, however, do not currently have this benefit. This is why, now we have established our own self defence as unbreakable, we must look outwards.
Now is the time to ORGANISE, not only MOBILISE: whether this be within your communities and social circles, or your local antifascist action groups. Be aware of, and ready to travel together to potential fascist mobilisations all around the country – we will always publicise these callouts where we see them but it’s worth following antifascist groups from other places too.
Only through collective, organised, community-led self defence all over the country, inspired by the global fights against the imperialism that fascism originates through, will we ensure that fascist movements are continually defeated.
What has partially been a reactive movement so far, can now create structures through which we can organise a society that no longer produces mass fascist violence once a decade, and is based around the values made so visible yesterday on the demo:
Community solidarity, love, unity and grassroots, organisation.
Bristol Antifascists would also like to take this time to show solidarity with the individual that was arrested and to those brutalised by the police as they attempted to help.
Today we celebrate, rest, and get ready to go again. Whether in Bristol, the South West, Kernow, Cymru, or anywhere else we can get to where fascists dare to emerge from the dark, we will defeat them with community power, motivated by our love for each other and a collective will for this country to be a place where anyone is welcome – with differences celebrated not exploited.